30 JUNE 1900, Page 23

MR. BURDETT-COUTTS'S INDICTMENT.

JT is no exaggeration -to say that the most terrible piece of news that has yet been received from South Africa appeared in the Times of Wednesday. We say this, of course, on the assumption that it cannot be disproved. Mr. Burdett-Coutts may be suffering under some strange delusion,—that is just possible. He may have been no carried away by one or two spectacles of avoidable suffer- ing that he came to see similar spectacles wherever he looked,—that also is just possible. But except these alternative explanations, we can think of no other. Mr. Burdett-Coutts can have no motive for maligning the military authorities, no purpose to serve by making out the military hospitals worse than they are. The one thing that puzzles us is the magnitude of the discrepancy between his account and every other we have seen. Hitherto surgeons and nurses have agreed in praising the excellence of the hospital arrangements. It seemed as though, in Mr. Burdett-Coutts's own words, "amidst all the chequered course of this war, here at last was one white illumined square, one just and righteous cause of national con- gratulation. The reputation of England for humanity had been vindicated, for all was well with the sick and wounded." Certainly this was the impression which Sir William MacCormac and Mr. Treves conveyed to the English public on their return, and the public naturally assumed that it was gained from their own observation. Certainly, too, similar reports were sent home by one nurse after another. The note of every letter was the same. The wounded, it was said, had the best surgical treatment and the best surgical appliances. Medical science was as advanced in the field hospitals as in any of the great hospitals of London.

The explanation must be—unless, as we have said, Mr. Burdett.Coutts is wholly mistaken either in his facts or in his inferences—that the two accounts are both true,— true, that is, in part of different classes of sufferers and in part of different times. The arrangements for the care of the wounded were good, and it was to these that the attention of the eminent surgeons who first went was naturally directed. They might, as Mr. Burdett-Coutts evidently thinks, have seen something else if they had kept their eyes open, but he does not question that what they actually described was what they actually witnessed. But over and above the wounded there were, and are, the sick, and it is with the sick that Mr. Burdett-Coutts is concerned. More than half of the troops in hospital are down with typhoid, and to all appearance the provision made for treating these cases is of the most inade- quate kind. An ordinary field hospital should contain 100 beds, with 4 medical officers, 2 ward masters, 14 trained nurses, and 6 supernumeraries,—a staff of 26 persons for each 100 patients. The field hos- pital Mr. Burdett-Coutts selects for description lay within a mile of Bloemfontein. It remained there for ten weeks, and by consequence every effort should have been made to "raise the patients off the ground." But during the whole of this ten weeks not a single bed or even mattress was ever provided. The patients lay all the time on the ground. Moreover, the hospital in question had been broken in two before its arrival at Bloemfontein, so that the staff actually at work was reduced to half its ordinary strength. If the patients had been reduced in proportion this might not have mattered. Thirteen persons can presumably attend to 50 patients as well as 26 persons to 100. But far from there being any reduction in the number of patients there was an enormous increase. On April 9th "there were 250 in the tents, 90 of whom were typhoid cases." A fortnight later things bad grown a good deal worse. There had been no addition to the tents or to the staff, but "there were 316 patients, of whom half were typhoids." Beds there were none, mattresses there were none, and there were only 71 stretchers. Consequently 274 patients had to lie on the earth with only a waterproof sheet between them and the soil, and one blanket over each of them. The atmosphere of the tents may be judged from the fact that ten typhoid cases were often packed into a tent usually occupied by six, or at most eight, healthy men, who used them only at night. The comforts for the sick may be estimated by the absence of sheets and pillow-cases, and the want of any attendants to brush the flies off the patients' faces, or to prevent those of them who were delirious from getting up and wandering about the camp. There was not room to step between the men as they lay, the dying pressed against the convalescent. "the man in his 'crisis' against the man hastening to it." This was the state of things at Mr. Burdett-Coutts's first visit. At his last, some six weeks' later, the number of patients had grown larger,—at one time there were 496, of whom 300 were typhoids. Mr. Burdett-Coutts draws a parallel between this hospital and a hospital at Cape Town. The latter, with only 24 more patients, "has 20 medical men, 78 trained nursing orderlies, 27 untrained privates, and 9 nurses." The Bloemfontein hospital "was left to 3 doctors, 25 untrained privates, and no nurses." Had this been a hospital hastily extemporised after an engagement, great allowance would have to be made for these terrible shortcomings. But it was nothing of the kind. The hos- pital was at Bloemfontein, and the worst of the scenes described by Mr. Burdett-Coutts occurred during the second month of its occupation by our army. It was not, as Mr. Burdett-Coutts justly says, a case in which military exigencies were in conflict with the wants of the sick. These men had not fallen out on the march, the need for providing for them had not suddenly arisen before there was time to make any adequate provision to meet it. In Mr. Burdett. Coutts's opinion, "there were no military exigencies really involved that could necessitate, there were none so pressing that they can excuse, the sufferings and horrors to which our sick and wounded were subjected at this time and place."

This, we say, is Mr. Burdett-Coutts's opinion. But we by no means say that it ought to be the opinion of our readers. He has come to the conclusions natural to an eye-witness of what he describes. Englishmen at home are only bound to go with him so far as to say that these charges ought to be made the subject of an inquiry which shall be prompt, searching, and unbiassed. It must be prompt, because if it be not the evidence will in a great measure have disappeared. The survivors, no doubt, will remain, for even under the conditions described there have been recoveries, but in a matter such as this survivors are bad witnesses. During a large part of their sufferings they have been unconscious or delirious, and .what they remember when they are in their right minds may be coloured by the irritations and dislikes which commonly accompany grave illness. Consequently, evidence must, in the main, be furnished by inquirers Who have visited the places of which Mr. Burdett-Coutts speaks while they are still, or have quite lately been, in the condition which he describes. The inquiry must be searching, because Mr. Burdett-Coutts has taken away from Englishmen their greatest ground of satisfaction in regard to the war. We were unprepared, we were ill-equipped, we were, in the first instance, badly generalled. But in our hospital arrange- ments, as we flattered ourselves, science and humanity went hand in hand, with the result that never have the sick and wounded in war been cared for with such a wealth of apparatus and such abundance of comforts. If Mr. Burdett-Coutts is right this is in great part a delusion. A hospital in the Middle Ages cannot have been worse pro- vided, and in the Middle Ages a. hospital was not, as it is now, judged by the highest scientific and sanitary standards. We do not think that the people of England will be satisfied, we are quite sure that they ought not to be satisfied, until every one of Mr. Burdett-boutts's charges- have been dis- proved, or a well-deserved punishment has fallen upon those at whose door the blame lies. The inquiry must be unbiassed, because if this element be wanting it may just as well be not undertaken at all. The country, un- less we are greatly mistaken, will not put up simply with reports and explanations offered by the men whose action n. inaction is impugned. It will demand that the reports shall be the work of impartial judges, and that the ex- Aanations shall be tested as well as offered. Happily 6he Government, at the suggestion of Lord Roberts, have anticipated the popular demand. The facts are to be thoroughly investigated by an impartial Commission, and all that the nation has to do is to hold its judgment in suspense until it has been proved, not merely that the facts are, or are not, as Mr. B' urdett-Coutts has painted them, but that they could, or could not, have been different from what they are.