THE RISE OF NIGHTINGALE HOSPITAL.
Heaven must be won, not dreamed; thy task is set,
Peace was not made for earth, nor rest for thee.
_Lyra Apostolica._
And so the medical staff of the Nightingale Hospital of fifty beds
consisted of a resident doctor, duly qualified both by nature and the
colleges—the only true “double qualification” in this world—with a
consulting physician and surgeon of eminence who attended twice a week
for a proper fee. This last was not at all an honorary appointment,
because doctors never do work for nothing if they can help it, any more
than bishops, or even kings; and as they were prevented by the
constitution of the place from paying themselves in any of the
accustomed ways, substantial cheques had very properly to be drawn. No
new operations, no new drugs, no treatment of any kind not well
established elsewhere were permitted by the governing body (which had
several medical men on its board beside the lay members), because it
was held that, however desirable it might be to keep abreast of the
science of the day, it was first much more important then and there to
get the poor women and children of Commercial Road healed of their
diseases as soon as conveniently might be done. Science, as far as
Commercial Road folk went, was thus baulked of its prey—no great
hindrance probably to the human race. The ladies of Nightingale House
had not settled in that locality precisely on scientific grounds: they
felt they could safely leave Science in the hands of its devotees,
these being probably people so ardently in love with it, that they
would sacrifice themselves, their bodies and their feelings on its
behalf. The laws of supply and demand would doubtless meet that case as
they meet others. This scheme was for quite other and (as the
originators thought) better purposes; and the patients took kindly to
the idea. They did not mind getting well on empiric methods if the
doctors did not object to curing them without knowing why. For
their part it was a great deal better to go out whole and sound,
unscientifically, than to die according to the highest dictates of
science, or hobble away maimed for similar reasons. So it worked well
all round. The subscribers secured what they paid for; the patients did
not complain of getting well on such terms; the doctors had no cause to
grumble. It was only the medical journals which declared that the
hospital was not up to the standard demanded by an age like the present.
Two large and well-conducted Convalescent Homes were part of the
plan—one situated at Hastings, and the other at Godalming; and these
contributed at least as much as the hospital itself to the improved
health of the parish.
Now it was objected by those who were not friendly to this place that
medical knowledge could never be advanced by such a system, and would
stagnate and die, if all hospitals were conducted so selfishly. It was
answered that medical science could scarcely be in worse plight than it
already was, after all its great opportunities and hecatombs of
murdered victims, as admitted by the most eminent medical writers.
No objector to the methods of treatment in our great general hospitals
could express himself with more force than Sir Astley Cooper, lecturing
to the students of Guy’s Hospital, when he said: “Look, gentlemen, at
one hundred patients who come into the hospital. What is the miserable
treatment of these patients? You are aware that I scarcely ever enter
these wards (the medical wards) of the hospital. I will tell you why I
do not enter them. I abstain from entering them because patients are
compelled to undergo so infamous a system of treatment that I cannot
bear to witness it.... No consideration shall induce me to repress my
feelings, and I do say that the present treatment of patients is
infamous and disgraceful, for their health is irremediably destroyed.”
On another occasion this great surgeon said: “The art of medicine is
founded on conjecture and improved by murder.”
Nightingale Hospital could not do worse than this anyway!