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HOUSES OF DEATH: WALKING THE WARDS OF A VICTORIAN HOSPITAL Words: Dr Lindsey Fitzharris Images: Wellcome collection DR. LINDSEY FITZHARRIS IS A BESTSELLING AUTHOR, AND MEDICAL HISTORIAN WITH A DOCTORATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. HER DEBUT BOOK, THE BUTCHERING ART, WON THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD FOR LITERARY SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES; AND WAS SHORTLISTED FOR BOTH THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE AND THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. SHE IS THE CREATOR OF THE POPULAR BLOG, THE CHIRURGEON'S APPRENTICE, AS WELL AS THE HOST OF THE YOUTUBE SERIES, UNDER THE KNIFE.
Today, we think of the hospital as an exemplar of sanitation. However, during the first half of the nineteenth century, hospitals were anything but hygienic. They were breeding grounds for infection and provided only the most primitive facilities for the sick and dying, many of whom were housed on wards with little ventilation or access to clean water. As a result of this squalor, hospitals became known as "Houses of Death.” The best that can be said about Victorian hospitals is that they were a slight improvement over their Georgian predecessors. That's hardly a ringing endorsement when one considers that a hospital's "Chief Bug-Catcher" (whose job it was to rid the mattresses of lice) was paid more than its surgeons in the eighteenth century. In fact, bed bugs were so common that the "Bug Destroyer" Andrew Cooke (see image above) claimed to have cleared upwards of 20,000 beds of insects during the course of his career. [1] In spite of token efforts to make them cleaner, most hospitals remained overcrowded, grimy, and poorly managed. The assistant surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital in London was expected to examine over 200 patients in a single day. The sick often languished in filth for long periods before they received medical attention, because most hospitals were disastrously understaffed. In 1825, visitors to St. George's Hospital discovered mushrooms and wriggling maggots thriving in the damp, soiled sheets of a patient with a compound fracture. The afflicted man, believing this to be the norm, had not complained about the conditions, nor had any of his fellow convalescents thought the squalor especially noteworthy. [2] Worst of all was the fact that a sickening odor permeated every hospital ward. The air was thick with the stench of piss, shit, and vomit. The smell was so offensive that the staff sometimes walked around with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses. Doctors didn't exactly smell like rose beds, either. Berkeley Moynihan (one of the first surgeons in England to use rubber gloves) recalled how he and his colleagues used to throw off their own jackets when entering the operating theater and don ancient frocks that were often stiff with dried blood and pus. They had belonged to retired members of staff and were worn as badges of honor by their proud successors, as were many items of surgical clothing. The operating theaters within these hospitals were just as dirty as the surgeons working in them. In
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