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54
each Station, as distinct from the additional horses and drivers
required in proportion to the work to be performed. It should be
mentioned that, in addition to the patients conveyed to the
hospitals, much work was effected by the service in conveying
convalescents to the Northern and other hospitals, and recovered
cases from the Northern hospital to town hospitals for discharge,
and from hospitals to homes. The vehicles in all traversed
83,061 miles.
SMALL-POX HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION.
The Royal Commission (1882), in one of their " practical
recommendations," proposed that provision should be made of
sites and buildings which could without difficulty be made capa.
ble of receiving 2100, or by special exertion, 2700 small-pox
patients. The actual accommodation falls far below the smaller
of these totals, consisting as it does of some 350 beds at the
Hospital Ships, a few beds at three of the London hospitals (beds
for exceptional patients, and which the Asylums Board will not
suffer to be occupied except in case of urgent necessity), and 800
beds at Darenth, viz., 600 for convalescing patients at the Gore
Farm Hospital, and 200 for acute cases in the associated Infirmary,
the administrative block being capable of service for 1000
patients. The Darenth estate is always available upon emergency
for the erection of huts, tents, &c., equal to any probable demand for
accommodation. It may be hoped, moreover, that as the Managers
now remove every small-pox patient out of London, whose
removal can be effected with safety—and, happily, this is generally
the case—hospital accommodation in the future will not be
required to the amount provided during former epidemics.
The Hospital Ships are maintained in constant readiness
for use. A proposal to close them was sometime since pressed
upon the Asylums Board, on the ground that money would be
saved if sporadic cases of small-pox between epidemic periods,
were treated in London instead of being taken down the river.
The money saving would not be considerable in any event, as it