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A cruel, tormenting world!

Free to read here:

Pulling no punches, mincing no words, here George Orwell delivers the sour, and the unpleasant, facts of being an "invalide" in a rundown Parisian public hospital, Hôpital X, when admitted with pneumonia in 1929.
In filthy surroundings, treated in life and death, as having little worth beyond that of an animal, some succumbed, or survived by escaping their tormentors. Then, comparing fates to previous literary exposure of healthcare/ torture in Zola's "Debacle" and Tolstoy's " War and Peace".

Interest was only shown if one had interesting signs to display, to the enthusiastic medical students, clustering around their austere black frock-coated specialist master, or when a particularly painful procedures were being performed, when the audience were the other inhabitants of the long, narrow room with close adjacent beds. There was no privacy or attempt to minimise the exposure to the sufferings of the afflicted.

He compares the experience of in-patient life between this French and the more endearing British public Hospitals, and comments on the noted differences between their respective nursing staffs. I suspect, that the influence of Florence Nightingale has much to explain the latter's respect for both people, both in their lives, but also, death. Similarly, the enhanced cleanliness of a British Hospital ward may well equate to the Protestant ethos of "Cleanliness being next to Godliness"?

The sordid death of a patient in the French hospital ward serves to expose his horror of a slow, painful, "natural" death compared to that of a soldier dying during war-time "in his boots". The lack of privacy, or respect, shown by the staff, as well as other inmates, to this individual is compared to that of one experienced by a fellow in-patient of a British Hospital ward, when the (dead) patient miraculously disappeared from his bed during a mealtime when they were in the dining room.

The expectation that you were unlikely to return from a trip to a Hospital particularly in the 19th century is briefly discussed, ie, "you went to a Hospital to die", is still prevalent in some places today. I have certainly met it in my practice in healthcare, for example, when ringing up a certain patient's family, the comment to the intended recipient would be, "It's the Death Centre on the phone for you," as the receiver was passed over!

Overall, though, a sobering essay on the treatment through healthcare of the impoverished, both in life and in death, which reflects the glaring disparities of both individual attention, respect and outcome that remain still so prevalent today. Reference any public health publication for the requisite confirmation.

Plaudits to Bionic Jean and the lively and always illuminating George Orwell Matters! Book Group for encouraging my reading activities!