CURRENT LITERATURE.
Burdett's Hospital Annual, 1890. Edited by Henry C. Burdett. (The Hospital Office.)—This Annual contains, as usual, a great amount of interesting and valuable information. The average cost of beds is one of the facts to which one naturally turns. Taking the eleven hospitals to which medical schools are attached, it is found to vary from £110 16s. 8d. at University College, to £70 18s. 9d. at the Westminster, according to one mode of reckoning ; and £101 10s. 11d. at King's College, to £64 9s. at the Westminster, according to another. The average cost of each in-patient gives a somewhat different result. Here the maximum is found at King's College (£8 lls. 7d.), and the mini- mum again at the Westminster (£4 10s. 7d.) ; but University College Hospital, instead of being at the top of the list, as it is by one reckoning, now has four above it. The figure is £6 Os. 7d. The cost of alcohol is greatest at St. George's (£3 6s 5d. per bed), and least at the Homoeopathic (£1 2a. 4d.) The cost of provisions seems to vary in an inverse ratio, for they cost £30 3s. 4d. at the Homoeopathic, and £231s. 9d. at St. George's. It should be observed that neither St. Bartholomew's nor St. Thomas's appears in the list. The first of these makes no return as to expenditure, but states its average income (for the last three years) at £59,693 (a larger sum than any of the hospitals that make returns). The average number of beds is 540. If we deduct from the income the cost of the Convalescent Home at Swanley, £3,200, and ls. a head for the 17,130 out-patients, and £500 for the 127,651 casualties, we get in round numbers about £100 per bed. St. Thomas's makes no return of income, but gives £39,167 for ex- penditure. Making a similar deduction for the 25,918 out- patients, we get about £38,006 to be divided by an average number of 365 beds occupied, with a quotient of a little over £104.
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