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which a current is kept up by a coil.of hot-water pipes, which will be always at work, as they are part of the system for sup plying hot water night and day to each ward. As an auxiliary for cold weather, coils are introduced on the floor, and the boiler for working them is a separate one. Air inlets exist in the floor. One series brings air to the neighbourhood of the stoves ; a second series brings air to the hot-water coils, and, when these are at work, the supply drawn in by these inlets will be wanned by passing over these coils. These arrangements are quite distinct and disconnected for the different pavilions as though they were distinct buildings. The ward of which we have now got the general shape and idea ought to be so fitted and finished as to harbour neither vermin nor infection. Wall paper and wooden skirtings, it is natural to suppose, must be accordingly dispensed with; even yet there remains great risk of harbouring infection in the very material with which the faces of the ward are lined. Ordinary plaster is porous, so is soft wood; common floors and walls are therefore liable to absorb insidious poisons. The floors, accordingly, ought to be of the hardest wood, such as oak, not tile, which is chilly to the feet, and ought then to be rubbed with beeswax and oil till all the pores are filled up, and the surface is smooth and hard, or else oiled and lacquered, as is the fashion in Berlin. The walls and ceilings ought to be of the hardest obtainable material, Parian cement being recom mended as having the best surface for the purpose, and also as being white. Grey-coloured cements are objected to as look ing dirty. For the heating of hospital wards, English authorities concur in recommending open fires, either in ordinary fire places on the side of the walls of a ward, or in open fire-places formed, as already described, into some sort of stove—which ought to have earthenware surfaces, not iron—standing in the middle of the wards. This latter plan seems, at the present day, to be gaining ground. . It requires, of course, a fireproof construction of floor. The French frequently w arm their hospitals as they do other public buildings, by a hot air apparatus, and must thereby run a risk of diminishing the advantage of their excellent arrange ments in other respects. Attached to each ward are the one or two rooms belonging to administration which serve for its separate use, and these must be here described in connection with it. The head nurse of each large ward requires a separate room with a window looking into the ward. This is best provided at that end of the ward which is nearest the adjoining buildings, and, excepting this window, is like any ordinary moderate sized room. A smaller room called a ward scullery is also required with a fire-place, hot and cold water laid on, and a sink. In this place poultices are made, drinks kept hot, and many of those miscellaneous little matters of cooking and warming and washing up done, which require to be carried on close to the ward. At the opposite extremity of the ward are required a group of closets, and one or more baths, and a lavatory. The arrange ment of the closets is most important, not only should each have directventilation, but there should be a cross-current of air traversing the passage between the ward and the closets, in order, if possible, to prevent effluvium from coming into the ward. It is also desirable if practicable to retain an end window to the ward for cheerfulness sake. Mr. Scott has been singularly happy in his solution of this not altogether simple problem at the Leeds Infirmary, and St. Thomas’s Hospital presents another very perfect arrangement for this purpose. A stop-sink thoroughly trapped, and for men’s wards an urinal are also wanted. There ought not to be fewer closets than one to every ten patients. Somewhere near the ward, but not in it, there ought to be a small lift, on which the patient’s food, technically termed the diets, is brought up from the kitchen corridor, and it is usual to provide both a dust shaft and a foul linen shaft, from outside each ward to the basement. A large lift, capable of taking a patient and his bed and an attend ant, ought also to be provided in each block of wards. These, and no other rooms ought to be appended to each ward. Convalescent rooms where they are introduced ought to be elsewhere, and except some such addition as the balcony at the end of the wards of St. Thomas’s, which is a pleasant feature, there is no other apartment or provision usually re quiring to be appended, unless it be a private closet for the use of the nurse. We shall, however, find in St. Thomas’s Hospital a small ward for one or two beds, and a consulting room for medical men, adjoining each large ward. Those who have visited hospitals will recognize this descrip tion as fitting more or less closely the wards of the modern ones, but many will have recollections of having visited hospitals where the wards were different, had windows at the ends only, or windows merely along one side, had one row of beds down the centre, or were double with an open arcade between them like the nave and aisle of a church, and may feel inclined to think that this being so, what I have stated, does not much matter. Let me therefore repeat that the form of the ward and the arrangement of beds and windows and conveniences is held to be of the utmost importance. The knowledge has only been slowly and pain fully obtained, but it is now known that the peculiar forms of wards which I have just named are all, for this climate at least, a mistake, for the reason solely that they are found more difficult to ventilate, and there seems no reason to believe that any material alteration will be made in the dimensions, proportions, or arrangement of a hospital ward, till we have first established, if ever it can be done, a perfect system of hospital ventilat ion. And now that we have got one single ward, in what way are we to agglomerate a series of wards so as to make of them one large institution ? In the first place we naturally place them above one another, but of course this soon reaches a limit. Miss Nightingale considers and firmly maintains that there ought only to be two stories of sick wards under one roof. This is so at the Herbert Hospital. But partly no doubt from considerations of economy, and partly, I suppose, from the feeling that a communication of infection vertically from ward to ward is not a very obvious risk, it appears frequently customary to place three stories or even more of wards over each other. It is agreed on all hands, I believe, that it is advisable not to put the sick into a storey exactly on the level of the ground floor. The modes in which wards or blocks of wards have been arranged on plan are very various, but there appears to be a general feeling that the best possible way has been now found out. Where only two wards on a floor constitute the hospital they arc well arranged in a continuous line with a staircase in the middle; whore a larger number of wards has to be provided on each storey, they would now be arranged parallel to each other (so that all can have a sunny aspect) and at a very con siderable distance apart. This is called the pavilion plan, or block system. Each pavilion is in fact the ward, with its appendages repeated as many times as there are to be stories, and has its own independent staircase. It is isolated from its neighbours by a space which ought to be enough to keep it almost all day clear of the shadow of adjoining pavilions, affording its windows all the air and sun they require, and it is connected to its fellows by a corridor on the lowest storey only. A usual plan is to make these pavilions occupy two sides of a hollow square, and it is I believe correct to claim the honour that this arrangement was first started in England, the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Stonehouse, near Plymouth, being according to Horky the earliest example, and having been built in 1764. The best known example, however, is one of the Paris Hospitals, the Lariboisierc, which was commenced in 1839 and completed in 1854, and having been the most accessible as well as one of the most complete pavilion hospitals, has been so much referred to as a standard that the pavilion plan when consistently worked out as a whole is frequently referred to as the Lariboisierc plan. The buildings of the Lariboisierc are arranged round an oblong quadrangle, and consist of six pavilions for patients, three on each side, with buildings for the administration, occu pying four other pavilions, at the four corners of the quad rangle, and closing up its two ends. The pavilions for the sick are three storeys high each. The corridor connecting them exists on the ground floor only, and its roof forms on the first floor a terrace. Between the wards arc open spaces laid out as gardens, and the axes of the wards are cast and west, so that the sunshine will enter them all, if not interrupted. There is hardly, however, sufficient space between them. Horky states that the wards are 21 metres, or about 68 feet 9 inches apart, but that each one is 18’3 metres to the ridge, and that there is danger of their overshadowing each other, and that the distance apart is not, in his opinion, quit e sufficient to ensure them against