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A potted pen picture of the philanthropists who fought to bring about a kinder and more egalitarian society
BGS founding member and revolutionary geriatrician Marjory Warren was born on 28 October 1897. On her birthday, BGS Past President and historian Michael Denham reflects on her contribution to modern geriatric medicine.
Notes on the inaugural meeting of the Medical Society for the Care of the Elderly (later the British Geriatrics Society).
Developments which led to the establishment of the NHS
The role of the King's Fund in the design of hospital beds and leading up to the formation of the NHS
Before the Second World War, Britain was not self-sufficient in many materials. Less than one third of the food available in the UK at the start of the war was home produced and the country had to import some 20 million tons each year.
When Mr Chamberlain announced on September 3rd 1939 that this country was at war with Germany, the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) swung into action.
Michael Denham discusses the emergence of state hospitals - an improvement on the quackery and inadequate regulation of medical services which prevailed in the UK
“Moving a patient relieves bedsores:” it sounds obvious today, but it took the work of an innovative nurse in the 1950s working with a group of elderly patients to realise it. Bedsores, or pressure ulcers are lesions caused by a number of factors including unrelieved pressure.
Mike Denham charts the journey of British Geriatric Medicine's journal, Gerontologia Clinica from its inception, when publishers dismissed geriatric medicine as 'unimportant', to the highly successful descendant, Age and Ageing.
Originally lodging houses were designed to accommodate younger labourers who came to town to find work but were unable to travel to and from their own homes. Gradually the population changed to include an increasing proportion of older men, particularly pensioners.
In 1941 Ernest Brown, presented the House of Commons with the general principles on which the government proposed to base its post war hospital policy. He was organising surveys of hospital services in England and Wales, which in the event took 4/5 years to complete.
“There is no doubt that the occasional scandal does an enormous amount for a social service.” Sir Keith Joseph in the House of Commons 12/7/1971
Marjory Warren created the first geriatric unit in the UK. She systematically examined every new patient. Having separated the sick from the healthy, the old from the young, she instituted medical treatment and rehabilitation.
In medieval times, sick people were cared for in monasteries. Some religious orders built hospital wings where elderly and infirm patients received better food and received special care. Later, convents adopted a nursing role.
Early publications on geriatric medicine; the origin of the word 'geriatrics' and first mention of a 'geriatric giant'.
A description of the social context which gave rise to Marjory Warren’s assessment of 874 inmates of a large public assistance institution in West Middlesex in 1935.