The Cottage Hospital. By H. C. Burdett. (J. and G.
Churchill.)— At a time when so much discussion is going on as to the relative merits of large and small hospitals, it cannot but be satisfactory to notice the appearance of a good and reliable work on cottage hospitals, by one whose experience in such matters entitles him to speak with more than ordinary authority. Not only has the author been engaged for ton years in hospital management, but he has visited many of the small country institutions, and carefully inquired into the working of those he has been unable to inspect personally. Every subject has been treated of, from the building of the hospital itself to the diet of the patients,— some more fully perhaps than was necessary. It would be useless, for example, to start such an institution with a nurse incapable of adminis- tering castor-oil or of making a bed comfortably. Moreover, such things come more properly under the head of "Practical Medicine." A short account is given of each cottage hospital, its income and expendi- ture, the number of beds it contains, and the plan of the building, with tables of the mortality from the various diseases and operations. On all these points, the country hospitals compare favourably with the large ones of the metropolis. One of the most important considerations to which the author calls attention is that of the payments of the patients or their friends. Nothing tends so much as these payments to check imposture, and cultivate in the poor a proper feeling of self-reliance. No one who had to contribute towards his own expenses would come for quinine pills, in order to sell them again as soon as he got outside the charitable walls.
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