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42
Small-pox patients on the above-mentioned Gore Estate, which is
within easy distance of the river and the hospital ships at Long
Reach.
The land at Long Reach is immediately abreast of
the hospital-ships, and as there is here but little foreshore,
the water rapidly deepening, at comparatively little cost a
suitable pier could be constructed (with a dummy rising and falling
with the tides), from which convalescent patients from the ships
could be disembarked at any time and be conveyed by road
to the hospital at Darenth. The land will also be suitable
for the erection of buildings, if any are hereafter required in
connection with the administration of the hospital ships.
The contemplated arrangements thus indicated will suffice for
the provision of hospital accommodation for a very large proportion
of the small-pox cases occurring in the Metropolis, even in
time of tolerably severe epidemics, should the estimate of the
Hospitals Commissioners prove correct, viz., that provision will
be required for " 2,100, or by special exertions 2,700 patients,"
seeing that it is intended to provide beds at each of the existing
hospitals for a certain number of patients " too ill to take
a long land journey." It is estimated that from 400 to 500
such cases would have to be provided for in a severe epidemic;
the remaining cases, " being probably more than three quarters
of the whole number" (i.e. 2,100, or 2,700) to be " provided
for in two or three more country hospitals." The main difficulty
hindering the collection of all cases capable of removal out
of town, in the ships and at Darenth, is the distance that
separates a large portion of the Metropolis from the river. For
the cases occurring in the northern districts, probably an
additional hospital, at some distance from the Metropolis, will
have to be provided. Patients that can be conveyed to the river
will doubtless be provided for in the ships, and at Darenth.]
THE HOSPITAL AUTHORITY.
In the communication to the Metropolitan Asylums Board
alluded to in the previous section, the Local Government