NO HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLES.
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It is an extraordinary fact that among the innumerable medical charities with which this country abounds, there is not one for the help of those who of all others most require succour, and who must die, and do die in thousands, neglected, unaided. There are hospitals for the cure of every possible ailment or disease known to suffering humanity, but not one for the reception of persons past cure. There are, indeed, small charities for incurables scattered over the country—like the asylum for a few females afflicted with incurable diseases, at Leith, which was built, and solely supported by Miss Gladstone; and a few hospital wards, like the Cancer ward of Middlesex, and the ward for seven incurable patients in the Westminster; but a large hospital for incurables, does not exist.
The case of a poor servant girl which lately came to our knowledge, is the case of thousands. She was afflicted with a disease to which the domestics of the middle classes, especially, are very liable—white swelling of the knee. On presenting herself at the hospitals, it was found that an operation would be certain death; and that, in short, being incurable, she could not be admitted. She had no relations; and crawling back to a miserable lodging, she lay helpless till her small savings were exhausted. Privations of the severest kind followed; and despite the assistance of some benevolent persons who learnt her condition when it was too late, she died a painful and wretched death.
It is indeed a marvellous oversight of benevolence that sympathy should have been so long withheld from precisely the sufferers who most need it. Hopeless pain, allied to hopeless poverty, is a condition of existence not to be thought of without a shudder. It is a slow journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from which we save even the greatest criminals.
When the law deems it necessary to deprive a human being of life, the anguish, though sharp, is short. We do not doom him to the lingering agony with which innocent misfortune is allowed to make its slow descent into the grave.