§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, he begged to ask a question of the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for the War Department, but before doing so it was necessary that he should say a few words in explanation. When the civil hospital was established at Smyrna, great doubts were expressed as to the salubrity of the climate. At that time, however, there was a great pressure for room, and a barrack was offered to the Government by the Turkish Government for hospital 1626 purposes. Arrangements were made that that barrack should be immediately taken possession of, but that hospitals constructed of wood should he sent out, so as to; enable the whole of the establishment, before the hot weather set in, to be removed to some other more salubrious locality. He understood that at that hospital, owing to the prevalence of fever, and to the necesity of giving one thousand cubic feet to each patient, it was necessary to reduce the number of patients from 800— the number the hospital was supposed to be capable of containing—to 480. That being the case, it appeared that they had an expensive staff of civil surgeons, with a much smaller number of patients under their care than was intended. He, therefore, begged to ask whether or not wooden hospitals had been sent out, or, if not, whether they were about to be sent out; and if not, whether the intention had been changed with regard to removing the hospital from Smyrna to some other locality supposed to be more salubrious when the hot weather set in.
§ MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he had seen a letter from Dr. Meyer, the head of the civil hospital at Smyrna, written on the 14th of this month, in which he stated that he had reduced the number of patients accommodated in the hospital buildings to 480 or 490. He added that the medical staff under him was capable of treating double that number of sick, and he therefore submitted that the Government should increase the number of sick to 1,000 or 1,200, and that that should be done, not by disusing the hospital building, but by erecting wooden huts in an open space adjoining the building. He (Mr. Peel) could not find that any huts had been sent out from this country for erection at Smyrna; some were on their way to be erected near Constantinople, but, with the application from Dr. Meyer before them, he thought a number of huts should be sent out, so as to enable him to increase the number of patients to the amount specified, namely, 1,000 or 1,200. So far as Dr. Meyer's report went, the hospital appeared to have been progressing very favourably, and in a private letter, received that day, he stated that the average statistical results were quite as good as in any other hospital in the East.
§ MR. LAYARDsaid, he desired to know whether accounts had been received that fever had already broken out in the lower wards of the hospital at Smyrna, and that 1627 all the patients had been removed from those wards?
§ MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he must beg to sate in reply, that Dr. Meyer had removed all the patients from the ground floor of the hospital, and moved them to the first or second floor. Perhaps the question would be best answered by reading an extract from the letter of Dr. Meyer, dated the 7th of April. In that letter he made the following statement:—
The general state of those in hospital is improving daily. The number of fever cases is diminishing, also the number of deaths, there having been only two last week. The orderlies have hitherto been sleeping in the sick wards, and many have in consequence been attacked with fever; they are now being moved into rooms appropriated to the attendants on the ground floor, so that I confidently expect that this evil will be diminished. I have no misgivings with regard to the climate; if not over-crowded, the sick would do well here.