Michael Denham discusses the emergence of state hospitals - an improvement on the quackery and inadequate regulation of medical services which prevailed in the UK
On seeing the debate around the word 'geriatrics' inMay 2018, Dr Tak-Kwan Kong, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Hong Kong Geriatrics Society sent us this editorial on 'packing geriatrics'. It was published in the Society's Journal in 1996.
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.
“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.
“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
A potted pen picture of the philanthropists who fought to bring about a kinder and more egalitarian society
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.
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.
Developments which led to the establishment of the NHS
The role of immigrants from the Asian sub-continent in the development of geriatric medicine
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.
It is widely assumed that geriatric medicine was an invention of the twentieth century. However, from the time of Hippocrates, there has been interest in the prolongation of the lifespan, the maintenance of health in old age and age related disease patterns.
Notes on the inaugural meeting of the Medical Society for the Care of the Elderly (later the British Geriatrics Society).
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.
At Cambridge, I research the historical older populations of England and Wales, using the 1851-1911 census, and behind every entry on that census is an older person with a story to tell.