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THE RIO TINTO COMPANY'S HOSPITALS IN SPAIN.
THE RIO TINTO COMPANY’S HOSPITALS IN SPAIN.
1343
has not yet been raised, it is only possible to conjecture on mediaeval prison." The consideration of the terrible condithe change it will occasion in the scenery, but it may be tion of the Spanish hospital led the Rio Tinto Company to erect the building to which I have referred. I am entirely said that the chief objection urged against this part of the for the plan and construction of this hospital. responsible scheme—namely, that in the time of drought large areas of It has recently been enlarged by the addition of an upper the foreshore on either side of the lake will be exposed-is storey over the central block. This new storey is fitted up not likely to be realised, since the fluctuations of level will for medical patients, and the two wards on the ground The patients floor are now occupied by surgical cases. be no more than they are at the present time. are under the care of an English matrcn and an English As regards the dam at the St. John’s Vale end of the lake, nurse, assisted by a Spanish house surgeon and Spanish ’it must be said that, although it is far from being an unsightly nurses, the latter of whom readily proved themselves object, it will be some time before it rivals, as some of the to be capable in the performance of their duties. The more enthusiastic supporters of the scheme seem to have hospital stands in its own grounds just outside the town, and is surrounded by gardens and vineyards. The wa!ds the beauties the dam of Eagles’ Crag. Still, imagined, the are each 44 ft. by 22 ft., and are raised one metre from is not visible from the eastern side of the lake, along which the ground, with abundant ventilation. The closets are the coaches run, and only for a very short distance from the arranged on the dry earth system, and a sanitary cart new road which the Manchester corporation is making along permits of a daily removal of all refuse. There is no drain anywhere near the building. Eight years’ work in this the western side. It may be said, we think, that, if the same precautions are hospital has proved it to be well adapted to the climate of Southern Spain. The other hospital, built by the company always taken as were taken at Thirlmere by the combined action at their mines at Rio Tinto fifty miles inland from the seaport of the public, the Select Committee of the House of Commons, of Huelva, was constructed to contain 44 beds, to meet the the corporation of Manchester and the Thirlmere Defence accidents occurring amongst 12, 000 workmen. The main body Association, the acquirement of our lakes by wealthy corpora- of the Mines Hospital, as it now stands, represents the recontions, or by amalgamated corporations, is a thing to be rather struction and enlargement of a former building. The plan desired than the reverse. As things stand at the present time of this hospital was drawn up by Mr. James Osborne, conto the company, and the details of ventilaat Thirlmere the whole valley is secured for ever against the sulting engineer tion were worked out by Mr. Raymond Courteen, chief intrusions of the speculative builder and the devastation of medical officer. When it is stated that the shade temperature the miner and quarryman ; while the water of the lake is to for August averaged nearly 100° F., going up to 108° on the be spared the disfigurement and pollution of mining effiaents hottest day, while the winter is cold, it will be seen that such, for instance, as occur at Ulleswater and Coniston. special knowledge was needed to construct a hospital suitable The building was completed in 1892, and in The wants of Manchester are now met for many years to this locality I found that summer it is the coolest place in the district. to come, for the first instalment of 10,000,000 gallons the temperature on the hottest days in August did not exceed daily is but one-fifth of the amount arranged for and 85° in the wards, while in winter an open fireplace at one which the permanent cutting is capable of carrying. It is end of the ward and a specially constructed stove at the intended at first to raise the water-level in the lake by only other, with a pipe running along the roof and Tobins walls, give ample renewal of warm air. This 20ft., and the further elevation will only take place when the shafts in isthefree from drains, although the water-supply is hospital increased demands of Manchester and other places on the line abundant. carts remove refuse from all the c )mSanitary it The of the aqueduct render necessary. present elevation pany’s buildings. The Mines Hospital is proving itself most of Thirlmere is 533 ft. above ordnance datum, and this will satisfactory. The treatment of injuries of the first magnitude enable Manchester to be supplied entirely by gravitation. carried out by the medical officers, Mr. R. Courteen and Dr. R. Ulleswater and Haweswater and some of the other lakes Russell Rosc, gives results which can only be obtained by modern surgery under most favourable conditions. - could be utilised ; but the water of Windermere,
similarly
situated as it is but 134 ft. above ordnance level, would have to be pumped up for the supply of a town of any elevation.
Public Dealth and Poor Law. THE RIO TINTO COMPANY’S HOSPITALS IN SPAIN. BY W. A.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT.
MACKAY, M. D. EDIN. REPORTS OF MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH.
A BRIEF account of two hospitals erected in Spain by a well-known English company will perhaps interest a consider;able number of the readers of THE LANCET. These hospitals which have sprung up in the wake of English commerce have already had some influence on a forward movement in the construction of hospitals which can now be distinctly perThe Huelva Hosceived in certain parts of the peninsula. pital was built in 1884 by the Rio Tinto Company solely for the benefit of their employes, and is therefore a private hospital. But the privilege of admission has since been extended to seamen visiting the port of Huelva, and a great boon has thus been conferred on a class of men exposed to special dangers, whose sufferings when ill in a foreign port are but little realised. Until this privilege they had been obliged to choose between their own homes and the ’Spanish Provincial Hospital. On this latter building I re-ported in 1883 to the board of the Rio Tinto Company as ’follows : "Its walls are lined with the germs of erysipelas and hospital gangrene. Medical and surgical cases are crowded together, so that it is not possible to pass I between two beds without touching both. The amount of cubic feet of air per head is one-third of the minimum .allowed in modern hospitals. Small windows, placed near the roof, and clammy walls complete the picture of a
Lancashire County Sanitary -District.-The sanitary condition of the administrative county of Lancashire, with its population of 1,768,273, possesses an importance, from the point of view of the country’s health second to no other county in England. The county includes eighteen boroughs, ninety-four local boards and twenty-two rural sanitary districts. The general death-rate for the urban districts was 19 34 and for the rural 17 31 per 1000. The infantile mortality of the urban districts was 155 per 1000 births, and that of the rural 124. Mr. Edward Sergeant points to the danger to infant life caused by the mill-workers taking their children in all weathers to a neighbour’s house to be nursed. There was during 1892 an extensive outbreak of small-pox in Chadderton, which Mr. Sergeant states " seems to have been acquired by aerial infection carried from the Westhulme Hospital, belonging to the Oldham corporation, and which is situated within 100 yards of the houses first infected at Chadderton. " Tramps seem to have played their usual part in diffusing small-pox over Lancashire, as over other counties, and Mr. Sergeant points to the necessity of increased powers for county councils and sanitary authorities in dealing with these social pests. Compulsory revaccination seems to us to be the most practical method of dealing with the difficulty. In thirteen districts in Lancashire measles is added to the list of notifiable diseases, in two chicken-pox, and in five whooping-cough. There were several outbreaks of enteric fever
1343
has not yet been raised, it is only possible to conjecture on mediaeval prison." The consideration of the terrible condithe change it will occasion in the scenery, but it may be tion of the Spanish hospital led the Rio Tinto Company to erect the building to which I have referred. I am entirely said that the chief objection urged against this part of the for the plan and construction of this hospital. responsible scheme—namely, that in the time of drought large areas of It has recently been enlarged by the addition of an upper the foreshore on either side of the lake will be exposed-is storey over the central block. This new storey is fitted up not likely to be realised, since the fluctuations of level will for medical patients, and the two wards on the ground The patients floor are now occupied by surgical cases. be no more than they are at the present time. are under the care of an English matrcn and an English As regards the dam at the St. John’s Vale end of the lake, nurse, assisted by a Spanish house surgeon and Spanish ’it must be said that, although it is far from being an unsightly nurses, the latter of whom readily proved themselves object, it will be some time before it rivals, as some of the to be capable in the performance of their duties. The more enthusiastic supporters of the scheme seem to have hospital stands in its own grounds just outside the town, and is surrounded by gardens and vineyards. The wa!ds the beauties the dam of Eagles’ Crag. Still, imagined, the are each 44 ft. by 22 ft., and are raised one metre from is not visible from the eastern side of the lake, along which the ground, with abundant ventilation. The closets are the coaches run, and only for a very short distance from the arranged on the dry earth system, and a sanitary cart new road which the Manchester corporation is making along permits of a daily removal of all refuse. There is no drain anywhere near the building. Eight years’ work in this the western side. It may be said, we think, that, if the same precautions are hospital has proved it to be well adapted to the climate of Southern Spain. The other hospital, built by the company always taken as were taken at Thirlmere by the combined action at their mines at Rio Tinto fifty miles inland from the seaport of the public, the Select Committee of the House of Commons, of Huelva, was constructed to contain 44 beds, to meet the the corporation of Manchester and the Thirlmere Defence accidents occurring amongst 12, 000 workmen. The main body Association, the acquirement of our lakes by wealthy corpora- of the Mines Hospital, as it now stands, represents the recontions, or by amalgamated corporations, is a thing to be rather struction and enlargement of a former building. The plan desired than the reverse. As things stand at the present time of this hospital was drawn up by Mr. James Osborne, conto the company, and the details of ventilaat Thirlmere the whole valley is secured for ever against the sulting engineer tion were worked out by Mr. Raymond Courteen, chief intrusions of the speculative builder and the devastation of medical officer. When it is stated that the shade temperature the miner and quarryman ; while the water of the lake is to for August averaged nearly 100° F., going up to 108° on the be spared the disfigurement and pollution of mining effiaents hottest day, while the winter is cold, it will be seen that such, for instance, as occur at Ulleswater and Coniston. special knowledge was needed to construct a hospital suitable The building was completed in 1892, and in The wants of Manchester are now met for many years to this locality I found that summer it is the coolest place in the district. to come, for the first instalment of 10,000,000 gallons the temperature on the hottest days in August did not exceed daily is but one-fifth of the amount arranged for and 85° in the wards, while in winter an open fireplace at one which the permanent cutting is capable of carrying. It is end of the ward and a specially constructed stove at the intended at first to raise the water-level in the lake by only other, with a pipe running along the roof and Tobins walls, give ample renewal of warm air. This 20ft., and the further elevation will only take place when the shafts in isthefree from drains, although the water-supply is hospital increased demands of Manchester and other places on the line abundant. carts remove refuse from all the c )mSanitary it The of the aqueduct render necessary. present elevation pany’s buildings. The Mines Hospital is proving itself most of Thirlmere is 533 ft. above ordnance datum, and this will satisfactory. The treatment of injuries of the first magnitude enable Manchester to be supplied entirely by gravitation. carried out by the medical officers, Mr. R. Courteen and Dr. R. Ulleswater and Haweswater and some of the other lakes Russell Rosc, gives results which can only be obtained by modern surgery under most favourable conditions. - could be utilised ; but the water of Windermere,
similarly
situated as it is but 134 ft. above ordnance level, would have to be pumped up for the supply of a town of any elevation.
Public Dealth and Poor Law. THE RIO TINTO COMPANY’S HOSPITALS IN SPAIN. BY W. A.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT.
MACKAY, M. D. EDIN. REPORTS OF MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH.
A BRIEF account of two hospitals erected in Spain by a well-known English company will perhaps interest a consider;able number of the readers of THE LANCET. These hospitals which have sprung up in the wake of English commerce have already had some influence on a forward movement in the construction of hospitals which can now be distinctly perThe Huelva Hosceived in certain parts of the peninsula. pital was built in 1884 by the Rio Tinto Company solely for the benefit of their employes, and is therefore a private hospital. But the privilege of admission has since been extended to seamen visiting the port of Huelva, and a great boon has thus been conferred on a class of men exposed to special dangers, whose sufferings when ill in a foreign port are but little realised. Until this privilege they had been obliged to choose between their own homes and the ’Spanish Provincial Hospital. On this latter building I re-ported in 1883 to the board of the Rio Tinto Company as ’follows : "Its walls are lined with the germs of erysipelas and hospital gangrene. Medical and surgical cases are crowded together, so that it is not possible to pass I between two beds without touching both. The amount of cubic feet of air per head is one-third of the minimum .allowed in modern hospitals. Small windows, placed near the roof, and clammy walls complete the picture of a
Lancashire County Sanitary -District.-The sanitary condition of the administrative county of Lancashire, with its population of 1,768,273, possesses an importance, from the point of view of the country’s health second to no other county in England. The county includes eighteen boroughs, ninety-four local boards and twenty-two rural sanitary districts. The general death-rate for the urban districts was 19 34 and for the rural 17 31 per 1000. The infantile mortality of the urban districts was 155 per 1000 births, and that of the rural 124. Mr. Edward Sergeant points to the danger to infant life caused by the mill-workers taking their children in all weathers to a neighbour’s house to be nursed. There was during 1892 an extensive outbreak of small-pox in Chadderton, which Mr. Sergeant states " seems to have been acquired by aerial infection carried from the Westhulme Hospital, belonging to the Oldham corporation, and which is situated within 100 yards of the houses first infected at Chadderton. " Tramps seem to have played their usual part in diffusing small-pox over Lancashire, as over other counties, and Mr. Sergeant points to the necessity of increased powers for county councils and sanitary authorities in dealing with these social pests. Compulsory revaccination seems to us to be the most practical method of dealing with the difficulty. In thirteen districts in Lancashire measles is added to the list of notifiable diseases, in two chicken-pox, and in five whooping-cough. There were several outbreaks of enteric fever