HOSPITALS, SPECIALIST

Great Ormond Street Hospital

Dr Charles West's initial medical expertise was in gynaecology. In the 1840s he appreciated both that no hospital in England catered for children and that general hospitals were disinclined to admit them. This led to him trying to persuade the Waterloo Dispensary to specialise in paediatrics. However, his effort proved unfruitful. Subsequently, he encountered individuals who were receptive to his idea that a children's hospital should be established. With the backing people such as Angela Burdett-Coutts, Edwin Chadwick, and Lord Shaftesbury, he was able to found the Hospital for Sick Children in 1851.¹ The institution established itself opened at No. 49 Great Ormond Street, a house that had formerly been the home Richard Mead, one of the 18^thC London's most famous physicians. His former library became the hospital s first ward. In 1858 a reading by Charles Dickens raised funds that enabled the hospital to buy No. 48 and so begin its expansion along the eastern end of the northern side of the street.

Location: Great Ormond Street, WC1N 3JH (orange, pink)

Website: www.gosh.nhs.uk www.gosh.org

¹. No. 49 was on the corner with Powis Place.

Moorfields Eye Hospital

Location: 162 City Road, EC1V 2PD (red, yellow)

Website: www.moorfields.nhs.uk

The Royal Brompton

In the 1960s Ian English (1941-2011) invented the Brompton Manley Ventilator at the Royal Brompton. He was a precocious consultant anaesthetist who specialised in cardiology. He had an interest in engineering. The hospital underwent a major redesign in how it was used; a whole floor became devoted to an eighteen-bed Intensive Care Unit. It took English eighteen months to create an appropriate ventilator for the facility. Its simple design made its maintenance simple. It was small. It proved to be capable of reducing cross-infection rates. Air was expelled from the unit rather than close to other patients.

Location: 1 Manresa Road, SW3 6LR1 (purple, turquoise)

Website: www.rbht.nhs.uk

The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability

The Royal Home & Hospital for Incurables, Putney became The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability.

Location: West Hill, SW15 3SW

Website: www.rhn.org.uk

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital

The founders of the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1849 included Frederic Quinn who treated Queen Victoria. In 1849 King George VI allowed Royal to be added to its name.

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital changed its name to the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine.

Location: 60 Great Ormond Street, WC1N 3HR (orange, orange)

Website: www.uclh.nhs.uk/our-services/our-hospitals/royal-london-hospital-integrated-medicine

The Royal Marsden

The Cancer Hospital was founded in 1851 by Dr William Marsden (1796-1867). It was London's first institution to dedicate itself solely to the treatment of patients suffering from cancer.

Sir Alfred Beatty (1875-1968) made his fortune through mining interests in Africa and gave 40,000 to help establish the Cancer Hospital Research Institute. The Institute opened in 1939 in what had been the Freemasons Hospital (and before that the Chelsea Hospital for Women) in the Fulham Road.

In the late 1940s the team led by Alexander Haddow was identifying drugs had the potential to be effective against malignant cells in leukaemia and lymphoma.

In 1954 the Cancer Hospital changed its name to The Royal Marsden.

In 1969 the Medical Research Council established a Leukaemia Research Unit at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School. David Galton (1022-2007), who had worked for Haddow, was appointed the Unit's first director. The team he assembled included Danny Catovsky and John Goldman.

In 1973 the Bud Flanagan Ward was opened by a group that included the haemotologist Humphrey Kay (1923-2009). It was able to provide intensive treatment for people who had aggressive leukaemia. Soon after its opening, the ward cared for the first successful bone marrow transplant in Britain.

Location: 203 Fulham Road, SW3 6JJ (red, turquoise)

65 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3JX. Marsden's home. (blue, red)

Website: www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk

David Backhouse 2024