I am walking along the streets, and in doing so pass a scaffolding where some new buildings are being erected. Suddenly I hear a shriek, and see a small crowd collected. A beery Milesian, ascending a ladder with a hod of mortar, slips and falls on the pavement below. He is a stranger in London, has no friends, no money, scarcely any acquaintance. “What’s his name?” we ask. “He ain’t got no name,” says one of his mates; “we calls him Carroty Bill.” What’s to be done? Why, take him to the hospital. The police fetch a stretcher. “Carroty Bill” is raised on it, and a small procession is formed. It swells as it goes along. The idle street population joins. We form one. A medical student is in the rear; he meets a chum, and exclaims exultingly, “They are taking him to our hospital.” The chum turns back, and the door is reached; admittance is easy. Happily, the place is not a Government establishment, and patients are received whilst there is hope. Poor “Carroty Bill,” bruised and bleeding, yet stupid with drink, is examined carefully by the attendant surgeons. It is of no use asking him what’s the matter; his expressions, never very direct or refined, are now very muddy, and not a little coarse. A careful diagnosis reveals the extent of the injuries received. All that science can do for him is done. If he is taken as an inmate he will have as good nursing and food, and as skilful care and as unremitting attention, as if he were a prince of royal blood. Wonderful places are these hospitals. If Sawney, subject to an unpleasant sensation on the epidermis, blesses the memory of the good duke who erected on his broad domain convenient posts, let us bless a thousandfold the memory of Rahere, who obtained from Henry I. a piece of waste ground, upon which he built a hospital (now known as St. Bartholomew’s) for a master, brethren, and sisters, sick persons, and pregnant women; or of Thomas Guy, son of a lighterman in Horsleydown; but himself a bookseller in Lombard-street after the Great Fire; or of the nameless Prior of Bermondsey, who founded, adjoining the wall of his monastery, a house of alms, now known as St. Thomas’s Hospital. Likewise let us thankfully record the gifts of the rich, of whose liberality such hospitals as those of King’s, and University, and Westminster, and the London, and St. George’s, are the magnificent results.

Now let us return to our friend Carroty Bill. As we have intimated, he is in the ward appropriated to such cases. One of the professors is now going his round, accompanied by his students. Let us go in. The first thing that strikes us is the size, and cleanliness, and convenience of the wards; how comfortable they are, how light, how cheerful, how lofty, and well ventilated! Each patient is stretched on a clean bed, and at the top are pinned the particulars of his case, and on a chair by his side are the few little necessaries he requires. The practised physician soon detects the disease and the remedies. His pupils are examined; the patient forms the subject of a hasty lecture. One is asked what he would do, another what disease such and such a symptom denotes; a word is whispered to the nurse; the sick man, whose wistful eye hangs on every movement, is bid to keep up his spirits, and he feels all the more confident and the better fitted to struggle back to health for the few short words of the professor, to whom rich men pay enormous fees, and whose fame perhaps extends over the habitable globe. And so we pass on from bed to bed. Occasionally the professor extracts a moral. This man is dying of gin. “How much did you take a day?”—“Only a quartern.”—“And for how many years?”—“Seven.” The professor shakes his head—the students know that the man is past cure, that death is only a question of time. A similar process is gone through on the women’s ride, and anxiously do sad eyes follow the little group as the professor and students pass on, in their best way mitigating human agony, and bidding the downcast hope. What tales might be told! Here lies down the prodigal to die; here the village maid hides her shame beneath the dark wings of death. Under these hospital walls—reared and maintained by Christian charity, what men once proud, and rich, and great—what women once tenderly nursed and slavishly obeyed—what beauties once fondly caressed, old, withered, wan, without money and without friends, alone in the bleak, bitter world—linger and pass away for ever.

Let us go down stairs, along that long passage through which eager students are hurrying. The door opens, and we find ourselves in a theatre, as full as it can possibly be of the future surgeons of England, now very rough and noisy. At the bottom, far beneath us, is a small space with a long narrow table, covered with oilskin; behind the table is a door. That door opens, and one or two of the Élite of the students known as dressers enter. A matronly female, dressed in the hospital garb, follows; some stout porters bring in a poor creature gently, and place him on the table, and a few professors and professional assistants fill up the group; the noisy students are still and eager. The professor advances to the table, in a few words explains the nature of the malady, and the patient, more dead than alive, endeavours to nerve himself for his impending fate. It is our old friend; his leg is smashed and requires amputation. An assistant administers chloroform, while the operator looks on, watch in hand. In a few seconds it is clear the patient is insensible, and the knife is handed to the operator, who, with his arm bare, and his sleeves tucked up, commences his painful task. Up squirts the red blood, and many a pale face and averted eye around testify how painful the exhibition is to those who are not accustomed to it. Happily, the medical men near have the calm composure and readiness of resource true science suggests. The first incision made, and the skin peeled around, an assistant hands a saw, and in the twinkling of an eye the limb is severed, and the stump, bleeding and smoking, is being sewn up by skilful hands almost before the poor fellow wakes up, wearied and exhausted by loss of blood, from what must have been to him, if we may judge by his moans and exclamations, a terrible dream. As soon as possible he is borne away, the blood is sponged up, the table wiped down; and another patient, it may be a pale-faced girl or a little boy suffering from some fatal malformation, succeeds. All that humanity can suggest is resorted to. Here science loses her stern aspects, and beats with a woman’s tenderness and love; and not in vain, for from that table rise, who otherwise would have painfully perished, many to bless their families, it may be the world. But all is over, and we follow the crowd out, avoiding that other passage leading to the dissecting-room, where on many a table lie the mangled forms of what were once men and women, in all stages of dissection and decay, with students hard at work on them, painfully gathering or seeking to gather a clue to the mystery of mysteries we call life. Possibly by the fire-place some half-dozen young fellows will be smoking and drinking beer. But why note the contrast? Out of the dissecting-room, beyond the narrow precincts of the hospital, masked in gay clothes, with faces all red with paint and wrinkled with idiotic leer, stand side by side the living and the dead.

The principal London Hospitals are the following:—1. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, in West Smithfield, first founded in the twelfth century, and refounded by Henry VIII. in 1546. The building, a spacious quadrangular structure, is principally modern, having been finished in 1770. It makes up 580 beds. In 1848,71,573 were relieved by this hospital, viz., 5,826 inpatients, 19,149 out-patients, and 46,598 casual ditto. Necessity is the only recommendation to this institution; and patients are received without limitation. The medical staff is equal to any in the metropolis. The staircase was gratuitously painted by Hogarth. 2. Guy’s Hospital, St. Thomas’s Street, Southwark, founded in 1721, contains accommodation for 580 in-patients, and has an excellent museum and theatre of anatomy. This magnificent hospital, which consists of two quadrangles and two wings, was founded and endowed by Thomas Guy, a bookseller, who expended £18,793 upon the building, and left £219,419 for its endowment—the largest sum, perhaps, that has ever been expended by any individual on similar purposes. Recently, however, Guy’s Hospital has met with another benefactor, but little inferior, in point of liberality, to its founder; a citizen, of the name of Thomas Hunt, having bequeathed to it, in 1829, the princely sum of £200,000! The medical school attached to this hospital, while under the superintendence of the late Sir Astley Cooper, was one of the most extensive, and probably, also, the best in the empire. 3. St. Thomas’s Hospital, in High Street, Borough, was formed out of two other charities by Edward VI., and rebuilt in 1693. Additions were made in 1732, and a large part was rebuilt in 1836. It contains 18 wards, and 428 beds. It has an income of about £25,000 a year, derived almost wholly from rents of estates in London and the country. 4. St. George’s Hospital, near Hyde Park Corner, lately rebuilt, has a fine front, 200 feet in length, facing the Green Park. It accommodates 460 in-patients. 5. The Middlesex Hospital, near Oxford Street, founded in 1745, has 285 beds, and relieves numerous out-patients. 6. London Hospital, in Whitechapel, was founded in 1740. Its wards accommodate about 250 patients. 7. Westminster Hospital, rebuilt in 1833, near the Abbey, has 174 beds; but three wards, containing space for fifty additional beds, are unfurnished, notwithstanding there is a great demand for hospital accommodation. 8. The Marylebone and Paddington Hospital, opened in 1850, has 150 beds, which it is proposed to increase to 376, supposing the necessary funds to be forthcoming. This, and the four last mentioned hospitals, depend wholly, or almost wholly, on voluntary subscriptions, which are said to be very insufficient to meet the demands upon them. The University College and King’s College Hospitals, and Charing Cross Hospital, are smaller establishments of the same nature, each accommodating about 120 patients, and there are other establishments of the same description. Medical schools are connected with the above hospitals, in which lectures are delivered by the officers, and which are attended by several hundreds of students. Within the last few years the number of medical students has considerably decreased.