Oct. 21, 1875 J 



NATURE 



543 



The water-closets in the houses are situated on the middle and 

 basement floors. The continuous water supply flushes them 

 without danger of charging the drinking water with gases 

 emanating from the closet ; a danger so imminent in the pre- 

 sent method of cisterns, which supply drinking as well as flushing 

 water. 



As we walk the streets of our model city, we notice first an 

 absence of places for the public sale of spirituous liquors. 

 Whether this he a voluntary purgation in goodly imitation of 

 the National Temperance League, the effect of Sir Wilfred 

 Lawson's Permissive Bill and most permissive wit and wisdom, 

 or the work of the Good Templars, we need not stay to inquire. 

 We look at the fact only. To this city, as to the town of St. 

 Johnsbury, in Vermont^ which Mr. Hepworth Dixon has so 

 graphically described, we may apply the description Mr. Dixon 

 has written: "No bar, no dram shop, no saloon defiles the 

 place. Nor is there a single gaming hell or house of ill-repute. " 

 Through all the workshops into which we pass, in whatever 

 labour the men or women may be occupied — ^and the place is 

 noted for its manufacturing industry — at whatever degree of 

 heat or cold, strong drink is unknown. Practically, we are in 

 a total abstainers' town, and a man seen intoxicated would be 

 so avoided by the whole community, he would have no peace to 

 remain. 



And, as smoking and drinking go largely together, as the two 

 practices were, indeed, original exchanges of social degradations 

 between the civilised man and the savage, the savage getting 

 very much the worst of the bargain, so the practices largely dis- 

 appear together. Pipe and glass, cigar and sherry-cobbler, like 

 the Siamese twins, who could only live connected, have both 

 died in our model city. Tobacco, by far the most innocent 

 partner of the firm, lived, as it perhaps deserved to do, a little 

 the longest ; but it passed away, and the tobacconist's counter, 

 like the dram counter, has disappeared. 



The streets of our city, though sufficiently filled with busy 

 people, are comparatively silent. The subways relieve the 

 heavy traffic, and the factories are all at short distances from 

 the town, except those in which the work that is carried on is 

 silent and free from nuisance. This brings me to speak of 

 some of the public buildings which have relation to our present 

 studies. 



It has been found in our towns, generally, that men and 

 women who are engaged in industrial callings, such as tailoring, 

 shoe-making, dress-making, lace-work and the like, work at their 

 own homes amongst their children. That this is a common 

 cause of disease is well understood. I have myself seen the 

 half-made riding-habit that was ultimately to clothe some wealthy 

 damsel rejoicing in her morning ride, act as the coverlet of a poor 

 tailor's child stricken with malignant scarlet-fever. These things 

 must be in the ordinary course of events, under our present bad 

 ordinary system. In the model city we have in our mind's eye, 

 these dangers are met by the simple provision of workmen's 

 offices or workrooms. In convenient parts of the town there are 

 blocks of buildings, designed mainly after the manner of the 

 houses, in which each workman can have a work-room on pay- 

 ment of a moderate sum per week. Here he may work as 

 many hours as he pleases, but he may not transform the room 

 into a home. Each block is under the charge of a superin- 

 tendent, and also under the observation of the sanitary authori- 

 ties. The family is thus separated from the work, and the 

 working man is secured the same advantages as the lawyer, the 

 merchant, the banker now possesses : or, to make the parallel 

 more correct, he has the same advantage as the man or woman 

 who works in a factory and goes home to eat and to sleep. 



In most towns throughout the kingdom the laundry system is 

 dangerous in the extreme. For anything the healthy house- 

 holder knows, the clothes he and his children wear have been 

 mixed before, during, and after the process of washing, with the 

 clothes that have come from the bed or the body of some suf- 

 ferer from a contagious malady. Some of the most fatal out- 

 breaks of disease 1 have met with have been communicated in 

 this manner. In our model community this danger is entirely 

 avoided by the establishment of public laundries, under mu- 

 nicipal direction. No person is obliged to send any article of 

 clothing to be washed at the public laundry ; but if he does not 

 send there he must have the washing done at home. Private 

 laundries that do not come under the inspection of the sanitary 

 officer are absolutely forbidden. It is incumbent on all who send 

 clothes to the public laundry from an infected house to state the 

 fact. The clothes thus received are passed for special cleansing 

 into the disinfecting rooms. They are specially washed, dried, 



and prepared for future wear. The laundries are placed in con- 

 venient positions, a little outside the town ; they have extensive 

 drying grounds, and, practically, they are worked so econo- 

 mically, that home-washing days, those invaders of domestic 

 comfort, are abolished. 



Passing along the main streets of the city we see in twenty 

 places, equally distant, a separate building surrounded by its 

 own grounds — a model hospital for the sick. To make these 

 institutions the best of their kind, no expense is spared. Several 

 elements contribute to their success. They are small, and 

 are readily removeable. The old idea of warehousing diseases 

 on the largest possible scale, and of making it the boast of an 

 institution that it contains so many hundred beds, is abandoned 

 here. The old idea of building an institution so that it shall 

 stand for centuries, like a Norman castle, but, unlike the castle, 

 still retain its original character as a shelter for the afflicted, is 

 abandoned. The still more absurd idea of building hospitals for 

 the treatment of special organs of the body, as if the different 

 organs could walk out of the body and present themselves for 

 treatment, is also abandoned. 



It will repay us a minute of time to look at one of these model 

 hospitals. One is the fac simile of the other, and is devoted to 

 the service of every five thousand of the population. Like every 

 building in the place, it is erected on a subway. There is a wide 

 central entrance, to which there is no ascent, and into which a 

 carriage, cab, or ambulance can drive direct. On each side the 

 gateway are the houses of the resident medical officer and of the 

 matron. Passing down the centre, which is lofty and covered in 

 with glass, we arrive at two side-wings running right and left from 

 the centre, and forming cross-corridors. These are the wards : 

 twelve on one hand for male, twelve on the other for female 

 patients. The cross-corridors are twelve feet wide and twenty 

 feet high, and are roofed with glass. The corridor on each side 

 is a framework of walls of glazed brick, arched over head, and 

 divided into six segments. In each segment is a separate, light, 

 elegant removable ward, constructed of glass and iron, twelve 

 feet high, fourteen feet long, and ten feet wide. The cubic 

 capacity of each ward is 1,680 feet. Each patient who is ill 

 enough to require constant attendance has one of these wards 

 entirely to himself, so that the injurious influences on the sick, 

 which are created by mixing up, in one large room, the living 

 and the dying ; those who could sleep, were they at rest, with 

 those who cannot sleep because they are racked with pain ; 

 those who are too nervous or sensitive to move, or cough, or 

 speak, lest they should disturb others ; and those who do what- 

 ever pleases them ; these bad influences are absent. 



The wards are fitted up neatly and elegantly. At one end 

 they open into the corridor, at the other towards a verandah 

 which leads to a garden. In bright weather those sick, who even 

 are confined to bed, can, under the direction of the doctor, be 

 wheeled in their beds out into the gardens without leaving the 

 level floor. The wards are warmed by a current of air made to 

 circulate through them by the action of a steam-engine, with 

 which every hospital is supplied, and which performs such a 

 number of useful purposes, that the wonder is how hospital ma- 

 nagement could go on without this assistance. 



If at any time a ward becomes infectious, it is removed from 

 its position, and replaced by a new ward. It is then taken to 

 pieces, disinfected, and kid by ready to replace another that 

 may require temporary ejection. 



The hospital is supplied on each side with ordinary baths, 

 hot-air batlis, vapour baths, and saline baths. 



A day sitting-room is attached to each wing, and every reason- 

 able method is taken for engaging the minds of the sick in agree- 

 able and harmless pastimes. 



Two trained nurses attend to each corridor, and connected 

 with the hospital is a school for nurses, under the direction of 

 the medical superintendent and the matron. From this school 

 nurses are provided for the town ; they are not merely efficient 

 for any duty in the vocation in which they are always engaged, 

 either within the hospital or out of it, but from the care with 

 which they attend to their own personal cleanliness, and the plan 

 they pursue of changing every garment on leaving an infectious 

 case, they fail to be the bearers of any communicable disease. 

 To an hospital four medical officers are appointed, each of 

 whom, therefore, has six resident patients under his care. The 

 officers are called simply medical officers ; the distinction, now 

 altogether obsolete, between physicians and surgeons being 

 discarded. 



The hospital is brought, by an electrical wire, into communica- 

 tion with all the fire-stations, factories, mills, theatres, and other 



