The Atlantic Monthly, page 189 by Various Authors
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is admirable in plan and locale, and this latter condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.
Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,--not only urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs. Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary; otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.
But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the hospital-buil