Hospital that Londoners remember in the
Pancras-road, where it divided the attention of
the stranger with its neighbour the Small-pox
Hospital, King George's statue at King's cross,
built from the design of the Literary Dustman,
and the Camera Obscura, to which access was
obtained by drinking beer. Here the work of
the Institution was still forwarded by the exertions
of an indefatigable committee. The annual
supply of malignant fever cases—scarlet fever
now being received as well as typhus and
typhoid—varies much. There will be a lull for
four or five years, then an outbreak. During
the lull, when there is nothing strongly to direct
public attention to the value of a hospital like
this, although the efficiency of the hospital has
to be maintained, its subscriptions fall off, and
it languishes for want of support. Yet it has
done its work so well, that in the year 'forty-
three, the fullest year for the house in Pancras-
road, nearly one thousand five hundred patients
were admitted, and in the years 'forty-seven and
'forty-eight, the last years of the old house, the
number was about one thousand four hundred.
During those years the present Fever Hospital
was in course of erection.

For, the Great Northern Railway bills had,
during the years 'forty-four, five, and six, been
watched in parliament on the part of the old
Fever Hospital, whose house was on the site of
its proposed terminus, and the result was a
settlement of compensation in May, 'forty-seven,
to the following effect. The railway company
was to pay for the hospital they wanted, twenty
thousand pounds, wherewith its governors could
build a new one, and a thousand pounds to
cover law expenses that had been and were to
be incurred. The railway was also to make a
further payment of five thousand pounds
towards the purchase of the ground abutting on
on the Liverpool-road, in which the new hospital
now stands. The whole cost of the site was
seven thousand five hundred. Thus the railway
paid, in all, twenty-five thousand compensation
and one thousand lawyers' bill, so that after the
purchase of the site, seventeen thousand five
hundred pounds, together with a hundred and
eighty pounds out of the thousand paid to cover
lawyers' bills, remained in hand as a building
fund. This, with the help from interest while
the cash remained in hand, was raised to about
nineteen thousand pounds: the whole of which
sum, except about five hundred pounds left to
meet the cost of occasional changes and
additions, was fairly and well spent between the
middle of the year 'forty-seven and the beginning
of the year 'forty-nine, in building that admirable
New Fever Hospital in the Liverpool-road,
which is not only the single hospital of its kind
in London, but probably the best hospital of its
kind in Europe.

It will hold two hundred patients. It lies, as
we have said, entirely surrounded by its own
open garden ground. A detached central house
is the dwelling of the resident officers, and this
is connected by open corridors on either side,
through which a fresh draught of air passes into
the inner open squares, with the detached wards
for the men on one side, and the detached wards
for the women on the other side. There are
great double wards, parted only by open arches,
very lofty, lighted by as many windows on each
wall as the walls will conveniently hold, the
rows of windows opposite to each other
admitting a through draught whenever it is
required. Besides the windows, there are ventilators
in the floor, ventilators in the roof, and
ventilating slits associated with the very beams
of the roof. The freest natural ventilation, an
allowance of two thousand cubic feet of space to
every bed, and means of artificial ventilation
added for use when required, ensure to these
wards all the wholesome airiness that is the first
necessity in fever. Over the double ward on
either side, only a narrower single ward is built,
so that there is nothing to impede roof ventilation
of the rooms on the ground floor; and the
single upper floor is even more spacious than
that below. In the large open square, between
the wards on either side, there are the engine-
house and a detached laundry, in which the
linen undergoes three soaks and a boil, before it
comes to the last washing, which is by machine.
The mere removal from a close court to the airy
ward of such a hospital, would often save life
though no medicine were given. Of course
there are baths, and all such needful appliances.
The newly-admitted patient has his bed placed
side by side with the bath in which he is
cleansed, and passes at one lift from the bath to
the bed, which is then smoothly wheeled, in an
ingenious machine made for the purpose, to the
part of any ward assigned to him. Besides the
public, there are private wards. To such a ward,
a colony of draper's assistants was sent from a
large London establishment into which typhus
had entered. To such wards, domestic servants
may be sent when contagious fever comes, as it
not seldom does, into a private household by
way of the kitchen. Only a payment of two
guineas is taken from the servant's employer, if
he be not privileged as a subscriber to the
charity. Many domestic servants are thus
taken charge of every year, and, being of a class
better nourished than the very poor, the proportion
of deaths among them is below the common
average. How much risk of desolation among
families is removed by such a provision; how
great a power of securing the best treatment
for a sick servant is thus given to the humane
master or mistress, it needs no words to
express. These payments for care of servants,
and the more considerable sums now paid by the
parishes for reception of fever cases from among
their paupers, are a part of the comparatively
small revenue of the hospital. The other day,
when we went through its airy wards, seeing
here a mother and her two young children in
their three adjacent beds; there, a convalescent
widow, of whom her husband, a few weeks ago,
when she was desperately ill, and he well, had
taken in their own narrow room a last farewell,
but who now lives, when he, seized by the same
fever, is dead; and here and there those groups