And because all general truths can only be verified in particular
instances, verify your general faith in that Christianity which you
profess in this particular instance, by doing the duty which lies
nearest to you, and GIVING, AS IT IS CALLED, to this hospital for
which I now plead.
Thanks to the spirit and the attainments of the average of English
medical men and chaplains, to praise the management of any hospital
which is under their care, is a needless impertinence. Do you find
funds, there will be no fear as to their being well employed; and no
fear, alas! either of their services being in full demand, while the
sanitary state of vast streets of South London, lying close to this
hospital, are in a state in which they are, and in which private
cupidity and neglect seem willing to compel them to remain. It is on
account of its contiguity to these neglected, destitute, and
poisonous localities, that this hospital seems to me especially
valuable. But though situated in a part of London where its presence
is especially needed, it has not, from various causes which have
arisen from no fault of its own, attracted as much public notice as
some other more magnificent foundations; while it possesses one
feature, peculiar I believe to it, among our London hospitals, which
seems to me to render it especially deserving of support: I speak of
the ward for incurable patients, in which, instead of ending their
days in the melancholy wards of a workhouse, or amid those
pestilential and crowded dwellings which have perhaps produced their
maladies, and which certainly will aggravate them, they may have
their heavy years of hopeless suffering softened by a continued
supply of constant comforts, and constant medical solicitude, such as
the best-conducted workhouse, or the most laborious staff of parish
surgeons, and district visitors, ay, not even the benevolence and
self-sacrifice of friends and relations, can possibly provide.
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