Handy book of cottage hospitals / by Horace Swete.

  • Swete, Edward Horatio Walker, 1827-1912.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handy book of cottage hospitals / by Horace Swete. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to h$lp in establishing a new one, may have some idea of what is required, and suit the design to the means and charity of the neighbourhood. In some places—at New Bromwich, Dudley, Sherborne, and Crewkerne—the intended cottage hospital has expanded into a large general hospital, more suited to the wants of those neighbourhoods. It has been feared by some that the establishment of cottage hospitals must tend to diminish the funds of our older institutions. This, I think, closer investigation will not prove to be the case ; but rather that the purses of those who have never before given to hospitals, have been opened, and they have been enabled to experience the luxury of aiding others. This may arise, first, from the fact that small subscriptions are gladly received ; whereas many of our county infirmaries have a stated subscription of one or two guineas per annum ; and, secondly, as the work is carried on before the eyes of the subscribers, he personally knows something of the wants of nearly every case taken in, and feels convinced that the small donation he has been able to afford, is doing the work he wished it to do, and not expended in large staff expenses, however necessary they may be. At the Hambrook and Wrington cottage hospitals, not far from the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the subscription lists show that the majority of the contributors, with the exception of a few wealthy landowners, who support both institutions, are those who have not before subscribed to the funds of a hospital. I believe it is very rarely found that a subscription has been withdrawn from the county infirmary, in consequence of the establishment of the hospital in the village.