who have bestowed the benefits of their learning and skill upon the unfortunate sufferers, brought within its walls, includes many of the highest eminence in the profession, locally and otherwise, foremost among whom must be placed that of Dr. Ash, the first physician to the institution, and to whom much of the honour of its establishment belongs.  The connection of the General Hospital with the Triennial Musical Festivals, which, for a hundred years, have been held for its benefit, has, doubtless, gone far towards the support of the Charity, very nearly L112,000 having been received from that source altogether, and the periodical collections on Hospital Sundays and Saturdays, have still further aided thereto, but it is to the contributions of the public at large that the governors of the institution are principally indebted for their ways and means.  For the first twenty-five years, the number of in-patients were largely in excess of the out-door patients, there being, during that period, 16,588 of the former under treatment, to 13,009 of the latter.  Down to 1861, rather more than half-a-million cases of accident, illness, &c., had been attended to, and to show the yearly increasing demand made upon the funds of the Hospital, it is only necessary to give a few later dates.  In 1860 the in-patients numbered 2,850, the out-patients 20,584, and the expenditure was L4,191.  In 1876, the total number of patients were 24,082, and the expenditure L12,207.  The next three years showed an average of 28,007 patients, and a yearly expenditure of L13,900.  During the last four years, the benefits of the Charity have been bestowed upon an even more rapidly-increasing scale, the number of cases in 1880 having been 30,785, in 1881 36,803, in 1882 44,623, and in 1883 41,551, the annual outlay now required being considerably over L20,000 per year.  When the centenary of the Hospital was celebrated in 1879, a suggestion was made that an event so interesting in the history of the charity would be most fittingly commemorated by the establishment or a Suburban Hospital, where patients whose diseases are of a chronic character could be treated with advantage to themselves, and with relief to the parent institution, which is always so pressed for room that many patients have to be sent out earlier than the medical officers like.  The proposal was warmly taken up, but no feasible way of carrying it out occurred until October, 1883, when the committee of the Hospital had the pleasure of receiving a letter (dated Sept. 20), from Mr. John Jaffray, in which he stated that, having long felt the importance of having a Suburban Hospital, and with a desire to do some amount of good for the community in which, for many years, he had received so much kindness, and to which, in great measure, he owed his prosperity, he had secured a freehold site on which he proposed to erect a building, capable of accommodating fifty male and female patients, with the requisite offices for the attendants and servants, and offered the same