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The Great Modern Hospital This article appeared in the Century Illustrated Magazine in 1910. Illustrations by EJ Meeker (except for the title graphic - but I couldn't resist including it). The text is extracted from the original article: "The modern hospital conception involves the segregation of disease. The modern hospital is based upon the most notable advance in medical science achieved within the past few years, namely, the recognition of the influence of environment in the treatment of disease. As a natural sequel the important principle has been involved that a hospital building should be adapted physically as a most essential factor in treatment. Wide verandas should open with easy access so that beds may be rolled out and patients given the benefit of fresh-air treatment at all seasons. The roof must be flat and adapted for exercise and recreation, and it should be provided with wind shields so that patients may remain continuously in the open air, well removed from the dust, noise, and confusion of the streets. Day-rooms must also be furnished so that convalescents may withdraw from depressing association with the very ill."
"No small share of space in the modern hospital is allotted to the diet kitchens which serve as accessories to the main kitchen. The latter, in some of the newest hospitals, are most elaborately arranged. In some kitchens may be seen troughs of live fish! Such extreme is doubtless unnecessary, but it does provide a patient who is ordered a fish diet a certain freshness. In the larger hospitals, such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, food is conveyed in heated vessels upon cars on a small railroad track leading from the kitchens to the wards."
"Complete hydrotherapy equipment must comprise every form of hot and cold bath and douche: spray, salt, needle, plunge, Russian, mud, and fango. Also included are thermic appliances for the hot air bath, and electric light bath (merely designed to induce perspiration – not as an application of electricity)." |
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