The central building for business offices is three stories in height and contains rooms for the porter, with offices for general regulation and regis tration, etc., and accommodations for the director, clergyman, unmarried physician, superintendent, inspector, accountant, and clerk-. In the base ment are the porter's room, laundry, etc. Besides the rooms for the patients, each wing contains a dining-room, reading-room, and amuse ment-room furnished with piano, billiard-table, etc. The department for violent cases contains isolated cells with barred windows high above the floor. The building for domestic service (a') contains on the ground floor the large kitchen of the establishment, with steam cooking apparatus and the necessary adjoining rooms, closets, and store-rooms, with apartments for the cook- and the female servants. The boiler-house is at c, and imme diately behind it stands the laundry, which is two-storied; the upper floor being a drying-room. Baths for men and women are in the wings of the building (a'), and in it also is the chapel for religious services.
ASy/11111S.—In the United States, public attention has been much attracted to the care of the insane, and large expenditures of money and of benevolent exertions have been bestowed upon the provis ions for their safekeeping and mental improvement.
The Slate ilospital for the Insane al Norristown, Pennsylvania, demon strates the fact that cheap accommodation can be provided for the indigent insane by avoiding the usual expensive administration buildings, and that such an institution need not necessarily require an imposing structure under one roof. This has beeu accomplished by the erection of eight sep arate ward-building-s, with boiler-house and laundry, kitchen, chapel, ministration building!, porter's lodge, stables, and outbuildincts The b • group of buildings has a front of 14.81 feet and a depth of 913 feet. The general dimensions of the separate ward-buildings are 277 feet in length by 90 feet in depth. Each ward-building consists of a basement, -used for steam-heating, ducts and workshops, and two main stories, each containing two wards and g,iving- four wards to each building. Each ward is complete in itself, with separate rooms, dormitory, dining-room, bath-room, etc. The wards are ventilated by stacks with steam coils at the base for creat ing the draught that draws the impure air from the wards. The entire institution is well supplied with water and gas, and is heated by steam from the central boiler-house. The building-s stand upon an elevated plateau, the main front facing south-east, and are surrounded by extensive grounds. Connected with the hospital and owned by the State are about three hun dred acres of land, portions of which are devoted to truck-g-ardens, whose cultivation furnishes wholesome employment to some of the patients. The total expenditure for the construction of the buildings has been $599,85o. The institution was prepared for about TOO inmates, and the cost of con struction is estimated at $545 per bed. The supply and administration buildings are adequate for a larger number of patients, and a further in crease of capacity could be provided at a much smaller cost per bed.
German HosAilal al Berlin. —The ground-plan and elevation („6/. 17, figs. 15, 16) present the hospital of the Aug-usta Union at Berlin—an insti tution for the treatment of general diseases. It is on a small scale and is built on the barrack system, an entirely modern idea offering special advan tages in its method of construction for a brisk change of air and thorough ventilation. In this example a part of the hospital (c, c) is arranged as a tent lazaretto, in which patients can have the fullest benefits of the fresh air. Small special chambers (a' , a' ) are also prepared for individual patients afflicted with severe or infectious maladies. Each barrack, built of frame, with weatherboarding, and provided with narrow encircling gal leries, contains fourteen beds in two rows; it also contains, besides, a room (e) for female attendants, a bath (g), and two water-closets. In the middle building there are also rooms for female attendants, closets and bath, and a tea-kitchen. In the rear of this building is a room for religious service, and over it, on the second floor, a meeting-room for the manag-ers. The domestic rooms, kitchens, etc., are in the basement.
American the United States, during the Civil War, much attention was necessarily concentrated upon the equipment of tem porary military hospitals, and the marked improvements then introduced were extensively adopted in Germany during the Franco-German War, and have been since used in many of the European hospitals. A surgical pavilion-ward built upon this principle may be thus described: The ward, 3o by 88 feet, having- a capacity for twenty-eig-ht beds, is placed in a build ing of one story upon a rectangular ground-plan of 38 by 143 feet. The entrance is into a hall 6 feet wide; on oue side of this hall are an operating room ffY, by 16 feet and a nurses' room f f;!-, by 14 feet, with linen-closet attached. On the other side of the hall are a diet-kitelfen, lavatories, baths, and water-closets. At the back of the ward is a sitting-room 3o by 16 feet. The windows are glazed 'double, and the building is heated by indirect steam radiation, the impure air being drawn off through registers under each bed into a ventilating--shaft. The foundations are stone, surmounted by brick walls, with an air space in the brickwork. To exclude moisture, the surface of the ground beneath is covered with asphalt, and the floor is lifted 5 feet from the ground, the space being open for the circulation of air through arched openin,gs in the walls along the sides of the building. The ward has also ridge ventilation. The hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia (fil. 18, fig. f), furnishes a fair example of this order of public institutions in the United 'States. It was erected in 1S74 upon a plot of ground donated by the city on the condition that fifty free beds should be maintained for the sick poor.