We recently had cause to devise a series of London walks that covered the topic of Medical Science.
We mapped out walking tours of several areas in London. One of the places that we covered on this intriguing London walk was Queen’s Square. This square is almost exclusively given over to hospital buildings and their history is as intriguing as many of London’s main stream historic buildings.
One of the hospitals included on this series of London walks is The Royal Homeopathic Hospital, which was founded by Physician Frederic Quinn in Golden Square, Soho, in 1849.
At the time of its founding the medical profession was attempting to establish a monopoly against alternative medicines, including homeopathy – which the Physicians wished to see outlawed.
The official medical opposition, however, failed, partly because homeopathy enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats and Royals.
The hospital moved to its current site in 1859 and the building that now houses it was built in 1899.
It enjoyed its heyday in the 1930’s and 1940’s and in1948 the present Queen became its patron, which is how it gained its ‘Royal’ designation. It also became part of the NHS.
It is still a very active hospital with a dispensary, and now offers many types of alternative medicines such as acupuncture and other alternative therapies.
Another Queen’s Square hospital that we included in our Medical London walks is the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, which was the first hospital to be opened in Queen’s Square.
Before the 1800’s there were no facilities for treatment of those suffering with neurological conditions such as paralysis and epilepsy.
Epileptics and the paralysed were simply sent to the ‘insane’ wards of workhouses.
This lack of medical interest not only reflected fear and ignorance on the part of doctors and physicians, but it also reflected the fact that patients tended to be poor and so it wasn’t a particularly profitable field in which to specialise.
The National Hospital For the Paralysed and Epileptic was founded in two houses on the site of the present hospital in 1860 by Johanna, Louisa and Edwin Chandler. Neither had any background or training in medicine apart from that gained by caring for their paralysed grandmother.
In those days the square was surrounded by the houses of the wealthier London citizenry. They were not impressed by patients walking or sitting in the garden at centre of the square and stopped them doing so. The Patients instead took their chairs and sat outside the railings in front of house of the Lord Chief Justice who was most displeased!
The fact that the hospital was founded by lay people meant that they didn’t want doctors involved in its management for fear its philanthropic work would become secondary to investigatory medical research.
In 1885 the original houses were replaced by the red-brick building that stands in Queen’s Square today and which is featured on our Medical London walks.
