MEDICINE

In the 12^thC there was a prohibition against clergymen shedding blood. As a result, the medical profession began to develop its own separate identity. In the 13^thC the universities of Oxford and Cambridge started to award medical degrees.

In the 18^thC surgeons and physicians sought to be appointed to hospital positions. Such appointments were regarded as showing their standing within their profession and so enabled them to charge higher fees in their private practices than they might have been able to otherwise.

The phrase general practitioner began to be used in the 1830s. It referred to those doctors who held both Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (M.R.C.S.) and the Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (L.S.A.).

Air Ambulance

The Royal College of Surgeons had issued a report on pre-hospital trauma care. In 1989 Richard Earlam (1934-2016), a general surgeon, and Alastair Wilson, an emergency consultant, launched the London Air Ambulance (also known as the London Hospital Emergency Medical Service). The initial Dauphin helicopter was purchased by the Daily Express tabloid newspaper after Earlham had approached its proprietor Lord Stevens of Ludgate. Kenneth Clarke the Conservative Health Secretary was approached to furnish a one-off start-up grant of 900,000. He refused to supply. Stevens then raised the matter with Prime Minister Thatcher. The money was provided. The aircraft was the first medical helicopter service to have a doctor and a paramedic on board. It was based at The Royal London because that was the only one of the multi-disciplinary hospitals where a helipad could be constructed.

The air ambulance played a role in aiding the victims of the Paddington rail crash in 1999, the Hatfield one of 2000, and the Potters Bar one of 2002. It aided people who were caught by the Soho bombing of 2002. On the day of the 7/7 terrorist bombings in 2005 it flew 25 missions.

Location: 77 Mansell Street, E1 8AN (red, pink)

Website: www.londonairambulance.org.uk

Allergies

Hay Fever

The Liverpudlian paediatrician John Bostock F.R.S. (1772-1846) noticed the coincidence of the pollen season and his suffering what were to be recognised as the symptoms of hay fever. In 1817 he was appointed a chemistry lecturer at Guy s, developing a specialist interest in the chemistry of bodily fluids. Two years later he delivered the first-ever paper on hay fever to a meeting of the Medical & Chirurgical Society. It took him nine years to identify a further 28 cases. These he described in a second paper that he delivered in 1828. In it, he referred to hay fever as summer catarrh . His technique for finding a degree of relief was to rent a cliff-top house on the Kent coast during the season.

Bostock did nor not identify the condition's mechanism. This was identified by Charles Blackley (1820-1900), a physician who practised in Manchester. Darwin held him in good regard and conducted a correspondence with him.

William Frankland (1912-2020) devised the pollen count.

In 2022 about a quarter of British adults suffered from hay fever.

Location: 22 Bedford Way (formerly Upper Bedford Place) WC1R 4EB. Bostock's home. (red, blue)

Ambulance

London Ambulance Service

Website: www.londonambulance.nhs.uk

Anaesthesia

The Anaesthesia Heritage Centre

The Association of Anaesthetists runs the Anaesthesia Heritage Centre.

Location: 21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB (purple, yellow)

Website: https://anaesthetists.org/Home/Heritage-centre

Chloroform and Queen Victoria

James Young Simpson was an Edinburgh. In 1847 he realised that chloroform could be used as an anaesthetic.

In 1850 Queen Victoria was pregnant with her seventh child. Her doctors Charles Locock and Sir James Clark consulted John Snow, who was London's leading anaesthetist, about whether the queen should use the new anaesthetic. Snow counselled against its use.

In 1853 the queen was pregnant for the eighth time. Prince Albert met with Snow. The doctor had changed his attitude with regard to chloroform. On 7 April the anaesthetic was used during the birth of Prince Leopold. Victoria was delighted with the chloroform's effect upon her.

John Tyndall

The renowned late 19^thC scientist John Tyndall suffered from insomnia. In order to try to help him sleep, his wife administered some chloride to him. The dose proved to be fatal.

Blood

Arsenic was used to treat anaemia. Janet Vaughan enabled liver extract to be used as an alternative. She borrowed a grinder from her relative Virginia Woolf. It poisoned dogs. She then tried it on herself. She was fine.

Vaughan had appreciated how blood was being gathered during the Spanish Civil War. She hosted the refugee who devised the system. It was utilised during the Second World War.

Blood Donation

Percy Oliver (1878-1944) was working for the Red Cross in Camberwell. He received a request for more blood from King's College Hospital. In response, he created a volunteer blood donation service. Blood donation became common practice during the Second World War.

Location: 5 Colyton Road, SE22 0NE. Oliver's home.

Website: www.blood.co.uk

Cytology

J.Z. Young

The anatomist J.Z. Young (1907-1997) taught at University College Hospital Medical School. His discovery of the squid giant axon and the corresponding squid giant synapse led Alan Hodgkin (1914-1998) and Sir Andrew Huxley (1917-2012) to carry out research that won them the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Location: The Cruciform Building, Gower Street, WC1E 6AU (purple, turquoise)

Harley Street

Until the late 19^thC Finsbury Square was a fashionable centre for the medical profession. Subsequently, the physicians moved to Harley Street.

Location: Finsbury Square, EC2A 1AS (red, yellow)

Harley Street, W1G 9QY¹ (orange, brown)

See Also: STREETS, SPECIALISED

¹. In taxi slang Harley Street is known as Pill Alley .

Homeopathy

Part of the reason why homeopathy may have become popular in the 19^thC was that it did not kill people proactively.

Charles Darwin was a user of the water cure although he did not believe that it had a logical mechanism.

The King's Fund

In 1995 The King's Fund united its Bayswater and Camden Town offices at Cavendish Square.

Location: 11-13 Cavendish Square, W1G 0AN (blue, red)

Website: www.kingsfund.org.uk

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (N.M.R.) was discovered in the 1940s by the physicists Felix Bloch and E.M. Purcell.

Geoffrey Hounsfield (d.2004) did not find the radiological profession receptive to the idea of the C.T. scanner. At the request of Dr Evan Lennon of the Department of Health, the radiologist Dr James Ambrose (1923-2006) of Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon met with Hounsfield. Dr Ambrose was sympathetic to the idea and went on to lobby the Department on the behalf of the project. On 1 October 1971, at Atkinson Morley's, Ambrose performed the first ever c.T. scan of a patient. A brain tumour was revealed in detailed image. Ambrose went on to be an advocate of the technology.

Sir Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI. April 1972

In 1979 Hounsfield and Allan Cormack won the Nobel Prize.

In 2003 the American scientist Paul Lauterbur (1929-2007) shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology with Sir Peter Mansfield.

Location: The Royal Brompton Hospital, 1 Manresa Road, SW3 6LR. Hounsfield had a long, close working relationship with the Royal Brompton. (purple, turquoise)

Atkinson Morley Hospital, Copse Hill, Wimbledon, SW20 0NE. Now a gated residential estate.

Medical Publications

The Lancet

The Lancet was based in John Adam Street.

Nursing

See Also: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Paediatrics

In 1545 Thomas Phaire wrote the first book in English on paediatrics.

Public Health

Sir John Simon

The City of London determined that it did not wish to become subject to the public health legislation that Parliament was introducing. In emulation of Liverpool, the Corporation established the post of First Medical Officer of Health to the Sewers Commission of the City of London. In 1848 the relatively unknown surgeon (Sir) John Simon (1816-1904) was elected to the post besting candidates who were far better known. His election was aided by the fact that his father was a prominent member of the London Stock Exchange, and the fact that he was not a member of the sanitary reform movement that was led by the likes of Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890).

Having been chosen as much for whom he was not as for who he was, Simon proved to be an agent of reform. He produced a series of annual reports on health conditions in the City. He developed good contacts with newspaper journalists. This led to his work receiving considerable coverage in the press. He had a strong belief in the power of his own writing to effect change. The impact that his exertion made was reflected in the way in which he generated opposition. While he did not achieve all of what he set out to do, he did sway public opinion into believing in the necessity of reform. After a few years effort he succeeded in winning over some of his early opponents. His reports and his systematic compilation and use of mortality and morbidity data helped to create the template for the role of a medical health officer.

In 1854 the General Board of Health established a Committee for Scientific Inquiries on the Cholera Epidemics. Simon was appointed to the committee and proved to be its foremost member. Building on the work on John Snow (1813-1858), he established a link between the containment of faeces and the incidence of cholera.

Location: 40 Kensington Square, W8 5HP. Simon's home. (blue, orange)

Quarantine

In the mid-18^thC Stangate Creek on the River Medway served as the Port of London's principal quarantine station.

David Backhouse 2024