HOSPITALS, MILITARY (ante). The principles of hospital construction were pointed out by a commission of the French academy of sciences in 1778, and improved hi several details by Miss Nightingale, Gallon, and others, and in the late American and Frauco-Gerrnan wars. The general principles' may be gathered from the following directions. The most important part of a hospital is the ward; that is, the special apartment, or system of apartments, for the reception and care of the patients. It should, if large, be arranged in separate pavilions of one, or at most not more than two stories. These buildings should be about 25 ft. wide, 14 ft. high, and of a length allow ing not less than 100 square ft. per bed. In warm climates the height should be greater. and also the floor-space, allowing at least 120 sq. ft. per bed. No one ward should contain more than 32 beds. The windows should be opposite, reaching from 3 ft. above the floor to one foot from the ceiling. and occupy one-third of the wall-space. The floors should be of hard pine or oak (Georgia pine in this country), and perfectly tight. In regard to the walls there are differences of opinion, but it is probable that a plaster ing or mortar over laths, whitewashed with milk of lime, is the best, on account of its absorbing power, noxious gases being undoubtedly disposed of in this way by oxidation within the porous spaces. A plan of hospital was not unusual in the armies during the late war of the rebellion in America, in which the wards or pavilions were disposed in a radiating form around a circular court, from 100 to 150 ft, in diameter, according to the site of the hospital. A plan of Hicks hospital near Baltimore, Md., is sometimes
given as a model. This has a mess dining-room in one of the radiating buildings, rather larger than the others, and the offices and other administration buildings in the court. A better plan was carried out in the hospital at Point Lookout, Md., in which the admin istration apartments, dispensary, mess-rooms, and surgeons' quarters were placed in a large building occupying a site among the other radiating buildings. The advantage is apparent in the open court that is unobstructed in regard to currents of air, and in the greater cheerfulness of the arrangement, which admits of a free view from one ward to all the others, allowing the convalescent patients who may be sitting in their respective porticoes to greet each other; for wounded and sick soldiers, when they are able to be so, are a very social fraternity. Ti.e central court can then be laid out in plats of grass and flower-beds, in the care of which the patients take great pleasure during their often long confinement and absence from family. The plan of the Lincoln hospital at Washington was the arrangement of the wards in the form of an isosceles triangle, they being placed en echelon, with the base of the triangle being left open. The triangular space between the wards was occupied by the various administration buildings.