Section I. 

 SANITARY SCIENCE AND HYGIENE. 



1.— HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION. 



By C. E. OWEN SMYTH, Superintendent of Public Buildings, Adelaide. 

 Plates XVIII. a and XYIII.b. 



In return for the honor done me in being- asked to read a paper 

 on hospital construction before this intellectual gathering I shall 

 try to give, in as concise a form as possible, first, my own ideas as 

 to the constitution of a first-class Australian hospital, and, secondly, 

 a modification of the same where sufficient funds are not available 

 to build a first-class institution. 



I will, with your jjermission, glance for a few moments at the 

 history of hospital construction. I believe it to be correct to 

 say that there was an institution in Ireland 300 years B.C., 

 founded by the Princess Macha for nursing the sick, and those 

 wounded in battle. In the same century the great Giijeratee king 

 Asoka built several hospitals in India. Later on at Cajsarea was 

 built a great hospital and leper house Alexandria had its hospital. 

 Rome had a hospital in 380 a.d., founded by Fabriola, a pious 

 Roman lady. Tlie Emperor Justinian built the Hospital of St. 

 John at Jerusalem. This hospital afterwards came under the 

 control of the Knights Hospitallers, afterwards the Knights of 

 Malta. The original order is now represented, I think, by the 

 Christian Masonic Order of Knights Templars. The ancient 

 Mexicans had hospitals and skilled surgeons. Again, in Spain 

 there was the hospital founded by the Moors in Cordova in the 

 eighth or ninth century. The Hotel Dieu of Paris, known as the 

 Hospital of St. Christopher, was founded later on. In England, 

 St. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's were established in the six- 

 teenth century, though the monasteries from early periods acted 

 as outdoor dispensaries, and in very many instances had special 

 rooms or wards set apart for the treatment of the sick ; in fact the 

 practice of the art of healing and surgery was principally in the 

 hands of the monks in England and the Christian countries, and of 

 the Jews in Spain. The eighteenth century saw the establishment of 

 the present system of hospitals in England, imder the direction of 

 laymen, York, in 1710, being the first of a number which shortly- 

 followed. 



I will now briefly sketch my conception of the requirements of a 

 first-class Australian hospital. First, and of the utmost importance, 

 a good high breezy site, if possible on a limestone plateau, with 

 open surroundings and in a salubrious district ; second, carefully- 

 studied construction based on hygiene. Many have supposed that 



