(From our Special Correspondent at the Huelva Gazette)
In focus to-day is the English Hospital. The Río Tinto Company, since 1884, has maintained a hospital in the capital city, on San Andrés Street, firstly for workers injured in the course of their duties and now also at the disposal of sailors visiting the busy port of Huelva. It is built on rising ground at the northern limit of the town, surrounded by low, undulating, vine-clad hills. It stands about 200 metres above the Odiel River and was designed by Dr William Alexander Mackay himself, who affirmed the need for the hospital owing to the deplorable state of the Spanish Provincial Hospital located close by in the Merced Square. In Dr Mackay’s own words:
Its walls are lined with the germs of erysipelas and hospital gangrene. Medical and surgical cases are crowded together, so that it is not possible to pass between two beds without touching both. The amount of cubic feet of air per bed is one-third of the minimum allowed in modern hospitals. Small windows, placed near the roof, and clammy walls, complete the picture of a medieval prison.
The hospital includes a magnificent garden and attends to the needs of between 200 and 250 patients per year. The patients are under the care of Miss Blackadder, a trained English nurse, who has served as matron since the hospital was founded. There are 25 beds on the ground floor, exclusively allocated for the injured. In addition, there is a room for convalescents and a ward dedicated to surgical cases.
According to Dr Mackay, when cholera visited Andalusia in the autumn of 1885, the Río Tinto Company—at the suggestion of Dr J. S. Mackay, Chief Medical Officer at Rio Tinto—placed their hospital and staff entirely at the disposal of the Huelva Town Council, and the cases were treated in this building in all stages of the disease. As in the rest of Andalusia, the cholera mortality rate was as high as 50%.
Staff of the Establishment
- Medical Director: Mr José García López
- Surgeon and Attendant of the Sick: Dr Alejandro Mackay
- Medical Assistant: Mr Pedro Seras
- Practitioner: Mr Antonio Bartos
Patient care is overseen by the Head Nurse, Miss Blackadder, assisted by two nurses, two maids for general cleaning, one cook, and two errand boys.
