We Went Into One Of The
Female Wards, Where Sixteen Broken Legs Were Being Successfully Treated,
And I Could Not But Admire A Very Simple Contrivance Which Remedies The
Contraction Which Often Succeeds Broken Limbs, And Produces Permanent
Lameness.
Two long straps of plaister were glued from above the knee to
the ankle, and were then fixed to a wooden bar, with a screw and handle,
so that the tension could be regulated at pleasure.
The medical men, in
remarking upon this, observed that in England we were very slow to adopt
any American improvements in surgery or medicine.
There were many things in this hospital which might be imitated in England
with great advantage to the patients. Each ward was clean, sweet, and
airy; and the system of heating and ventilation is very superior. The
heating and ventilating apparatus, instead of sending forth alternate
blasts of hot and cold air, keeps up a uniform and easily regulated
temperature. A draught of cold air is continually forced through a large
apparatus of steam-pipes, and, as it becomes vitiated in the rooms above,
passes out through ventilators placed just below the ceiling. Our next
visit was to the laundry, where two men, three women, and, last but not
least, a steam-engine of 45-horse power, were perpetually engaged in
washing the soiled linen of the hospital. The large and rapidly-moving
cylinder which churns the linen is a common part of a steam laundry, but
the wringing machine is one of the most beautiful practical applications
of a principle in natural philosophy that I ever saw.
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