Equipment & Facilities

Being a completely new hospital, the Kitchener like the Pavilion hospital was outfitted with the latest state-of-the-art technology at the time. The Kitchener was equipped with three operating theatres with adjacent sterilization rooms. There was a dedicated electro-therapeutic department where electrical and vibration massage therapies were used. Twelve Dowsing radiant heat beds were used for the treatment of feet, hands and joints combined with massage treatment for trench rheumatism, frostbite, stiff joints after gunshot wounds, sciatica and lumbago.A polygraph was used for cardiac work and a Mackenzie-Davidson telephone bullet detector for gunshot wounds. [1]

Like the Pavilion hospital the Kitchener was also equipped with a X-ray department where all gunshot wounds were routinely x-rayed, on a single day a record 500 such cases were admitted. [2] A full laboratory was also set up at the Kitchener which handled the pathology needs of all the Brighton Indian hospitals. Equipment here included an electric centrifuge, electric sterilizers, a hot air sterilizer and an autoclave. Specimens of blood, urine, septum and spinal fluids were studied here and the laboratory was even equipped to produce and test vaccines and serums. [3]

A separate building on the Kitchener premises was set up as a psychiatric patients with 20 beds and four padded cells. The windows were protected with wire gauze and all the radiators and electric lights were also provided with protection. This special ward was to act as the main psychiatric ward for any Indian patients in England from the various military hospitals. [4]

The Kitchener was a self-sustaining hospital with a dry canteen, steam laundry, three dispensaries, a pack store for clothes and even its own prison cells. [5]

On March 29, 1915, The Secretary of State of India, Lord Crewe made a surprise inspection visit to the Brighton hospitals visiting the Royal Pavilion, Kitchener Hospital and York Place Hospital and expressed his satisfaction at the level of care being offered the Indian soldiers. Lord Crewe spent several hours at the Kitchener Hospital and upon entering one of the wards with Sikh patients; he received a Sikh song of victory. [6]

Footnotes

1.“The Kitchener Indian Hospital”, The British Medical Journal (April 3, 1915) 613

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid. 614