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105
poses; by the erection of temporary wooden huts in the
grounds at several of the hospitals; and, lastly, by the erection
of the North-Eastern Hospital, the Managers increased
the accommodation for patients, in October, 1892, to 4,110
beds,* a total further raised to some 4,410 on completion of
the North-Eastern Hospital.
It is hardly necessary to insist on the abstract impropriety
of placing additional beds in wards, or of diverting to
the use of the sick, during the prevalence of an epidemic,
rooms usually employed for other purposes ; and no one defends
the costly expedient of temporary structures. It is
manifest, therefore, that provision of a permanent sort should
be made to supply the reasonable maximum requirements of
the Metropolis, which I estimate at 2,200 additional beds.
How and where this could best be done is the question.
Among the first questions to be settled, if the matter were
considered with a seriousness commensurate with its importance,
would be, the number of beds which may properly be
placed on a given space—say in pavilions of two storeys
each—and to what extent additional accommodation may
properly be provided on the existing sites ; as the more economical
plan, obviously, would be that of enlarging the present
Hospitals. The North-Eastern Hospital site, for instance,
is adequate, probably, for a thousand beds: the NorthWestern
Hospital, which is to be rebuilt, could be enlarged:
the Western Hospital could be still further extended.
Another highly important question to be solved is the requisite
provision for acute and convalescent cases respectively;
the latter, of course, being provided for outside London,
where less difficulty would be experienced in getting sites.
* These 4,110 beds were appropriated to the several diseases as follows: —
scarlet fever, 3,550; diphtheria, 280; enteric fever, 130, other fevers, and isolation,
150.