Mr. Holloway; who has already, we believe, begun to build
a couple of large -lunatic asylums in the neighbourhood of Virginia Water, is stated to be intending to devote at least half a million to found some institution for the sick in the immediate neighbourhood of London, only wavering as to the besirappli- cation of his munificent endowment. We hold that no class of sick people needs such a hospital so much as patients dying of some incurable disease not likely to last long — (for there are already one or two hospitals for - in- curables sick of chronic, though hopeless maladies),—such as cancer, dropsy, or consumption. These are the sufferers whose last weeks or months of life might be greatly alleviated by the appliances of so handsome an endowment, and for -whose sad position there is at present the least provision among the London hospitals. Not unnaturally the medical profession are apt to be less interested in cases for which there is no reasonable hope of relief than in cases where medical acuteness may still discover a cure. Yet the former class of cases is the one which appeals most profoundly, to. our compassion, and- for the expression of that compassion the bestowing of come forts procurable by large means seems to be the most natural- instrument. Indeed, by drafting off such sufferers into a separate hospital generously endowed, where, the great study is to cheer and soften to the poor the blackness of hopeless pain and rapid decay, the inventiveness of medical skill would be economised, and a very important classification of medical labour effected. Mr. Holloway, we are persuaded, could not do better than devote his munificent gift to the task of relieving the gloom and sustaining the weakness of those who suffer from poverty as none others suffer, through inability to procure the stimulus which alone enables men to fight with failing breath, and the an- testhetic or narcotic which dulls the pangs of continuous agony.
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