T WO Sundays ago, in another place, I wrote a review
of Denton Welch's posthumous and memorable book A Voice through a Cloud. I mentioned, almost incidentally, his invectives against the administration of our public hospitals and suggested that in this respect he should not be taken as a reliable witness, since his judgement must have been affected by the long agony through which he passed. This remark has brought me an unusual number of letters, from all •manner of people, asserting that their own hospital experience has convinced them that Denton Welch's criticisms were in no way prejudiced, but were in fact borne out by incidents which they had themselves witnessed and by the treatment to which they had themselves been exposed. Denton Welch's own indictment was in truth formidable. He protested vehemently against the abominable conditions existing in some of our modern English hospitals: —" the noise, the cruelty, the indif- ference, the uneatable food, the petty tyranny." He appears to have disliked the nurses even more than he feared the doctors. He lay there " wondering at the coldness in their voices and their laughs." " One pain inside me," he wrote, " began to conquer all the others. I did not know what was happening. When I could bear it no longer, I cried out to the nurses, but they were as stern and unbending as Roman matrons. They told me not to be silly and not to make a fuss." On one occasion when the pain in his leg was more than he could endure he loosened the bandages with which his splint was attached. This led to a terrific scolding ; the nurse fetched the matron and between them, " grim and purpose- ful," they replaced the splint by bandages soaked in plaster of Paris. " You won't be able to do anything about that," they assured him in a tone of sharp finality. He remained encased, imprisoned, captured through the parched hours of the night.
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