Disgusted of Maidstone...

...Well, you would be - disgusted that is - if you lived there. Not with the place itself, which though never visited is doubtless no better or no worse than it should be, but rather its hospitals.

You will, doubtless, have read of the recent appalling mortal brush with C Diff. there and, as have I and Bro. Geo alike, more or less gasped at the very shame of it.

What also you may have read is the very different experience of H's treasured mother when once a young nurse at Barts.

That story is buried somewhere in the archives though if I, as author, cannot find it there is little hope, expectation or requirement that you, dear reader, should.

So here once more is the tale of how once hygiene was done and done well in the early days of the NHS.

Some fifty or so years back, H's mother had opted for a nursing career as quite the thing for a growing gal of that time. ('Twas not finally to be, for she was eventually to ditch the nursing for the doctoring, ascending the medical professional scale to dizzying heights before retiring as Consultant Professor of Radiology. That though was for later.)

As a student nurse one of the requirements of the post, apart from doing everything required at once and perfectly, was to reside in the nurses' home of Barts. There at rest one night after a day's ceaseless and dedicated toil, she was woken from her slumbers around midnight with a call that Matron wanted to see her at once on the Ward.

Fearing the worst - that a minor oversight on her part such as forgetting to plug in some hapless patient to their saline drip had resulted in a slow agonising death - she dressed furiously and legged it at once to the Ward to be met by the fierce and unrelenting face of a Matron on a mission.

Matron had, indeed, been on a mission: to make a sudden, unannounced swoop on her - very much 'her' - Wards at the midnight hour just to make sure that her - again very much 'her' - usual daytime high standards of conduct (staff and patient alike of course) were being kept in her nocturnal absence.

Sure enough she had spotted a gross lapse and one that merited instant attention and rectification. H's Ma thence as she entered the Ward, wondering who on earth she might have inadvertently slaughtered, found Matron positively incandescent with silent rage pointing at a most awful sight.

For there at the end, as it were, of the point, was a bread bin in the Ward kitchen and outside of, instead of its only rightful place inside, said bread bin was a loaf of bread. Few words were needed: yes the Ma had been the last to use the bread in preparing a late-evening snack for a hungry patient - a good and terribly outmoded thing in itself of course - and yes, she had omitted to replace it in the correct and hygienic repository of the very bin appointed for the very purpose and no, she couldn't fathom what had caused her to be so remiss, foolish and unheeding of proper process.

Two persons that night caught it severely in the neck from Matron. The H's Ma for one naturally, but so too the Ward Sister who had not spotted and rectified the thing herself as she as 'manager' - a word not then known - oughta.

Condign punishment, therefore, was something like thirty lashes for the nurse, but a round fifty for the Ward Sister for her even greater failure of duty. (We are, of course, talking tongue lashes rather than the more literal cat o' nine tails variety, though by report Matron's tongue in such matters was far sharper and wounding than any knotted cord.)

That was infection control in the health service fifty years ago. A loaf of bread not properly stored was such a terrible breach of hygiene that it brought down the wrath of the God or - worse - His plenipotentiary on Earth of the time Matron.

Come a long way down since then I fear and what a desperately long way back up again it is.