by Trevor Dale Main Photo: Some of the instruments and medicines used in Victorian times.
This month we would like to express our gratitude to Aerobytes, a Cranleigh company in the field of aviation safety who have made a very generous donation to help with our matched funding requirement. Another significant anonymous donation has enabled Cranleigh Heritage Trust to achieve its matched funding target. By the time this is being read Cranleigh Heritage Trust should know if they have been successful in obtaining the Lottery grant.
A date for your diary is December 15th, when the draw for the 1000 Club will take place at the Santa Dash in Stocklund Square, Cranleigh. Registration is from 8.30am and the physical bit from 9.30am. The team has got some great additional prizes from fabulous local businesses.
Last month we offered some of the reasons why people may have been consigned to a mental health asylum back in Victorian days. Fortunately, times have changed. But let’s now look at the transformation in medical care since the inception of our local hospital in the year 1859, and bear in mind that this was a revolution at the time.
Perhaps minds will boggle! Or make us grateful for the services we get today, compared to less than 200 years ago?
The photos are of Victorian era instruments that a local resident is donating to our project.
Medical care during the Victorian era was characterized by a combination of ineffective treatments, lack of government intervention, and a medical profession that was still evolving. The first surgery with any meaningful anaesthetic was performed in 1846. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis first proposed that washing hands between maternity patients would reduce mortality. He was ridiculed and confined in a lunatic asylum by his fellow medics and died from an infection from a wound suffered during a beating. The first antibiotic was used in 1910 and penicillin discovered in 1928. Where would we be without those everyday medicines now?
Treatments were often ineffective and dangerous, and included bloodletting, blistering, and high doses of mineral poisons. Many medicines and anaesthetics are poisons of course, which is why dosage is so crucial. Other treatments included herbal remedies, tonics, pills, and potions from apothecaries. Our own Dr Albert Napper was an apothecary as well as qualified as a surgeon. Today we would equate apothecary with pharmacy. We plan to incorporate a medicinal garden at the Old Hospital Cottage similar to the one there in the 1860’s courtesy of funding from Cranleigh Rotary.
There were three types of medical practitioners: apothecaries, surgeons, and physicians.
Apothecaries and surgeons often learned their trades through apprenticeships, while physicians received medical degrees from Oxford or Cambridge. Dr Napper trained as a surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, then located near London Bridge and Guy’s Hospital. He knew only too well the difficulties and dangers of transporting the sick there along appalling roads. His skills at surgery saved many lives here.
The late Keith Atkins, a local man, wrote a most fascinating thesis but sadly died before he was awarded his PhD. His supervisor, Dr Sue Hawkins, completed his work and ensured a posthumous PhD was granted in light of his immense research into Cranleigh and other Cottage Hospitals. Dr Hawkins has visited our project and is helping with historical detail. For instance, we were informed that Florence Nightingale pushed for the incorporation of sash windows in operating rooms, such as upstairs at Cranleigh. The window was south-facing to maximise available light and if opened at top and bottom it aided air circulation. Perhaps it’s not too good to ponder on the smells associated with Victorian surgery and the circulation of airborne bugs in an age of no antiseptic aids!
Keith Atkins’ thesis contains research into the patients attending Cranleigh. Most were paupers and many had suffered accidents resulting in fractures and worse. This was a time of the railway and Wey and Arun canal being constructed nearby and new complex farm machinery with no health and safety as we would recognise it. An underlying cause of ailments appears to have been the very poor diet at the time. The breadwinner in the family would have had the major share of what nourishment there was and then the children and females tended to suffer very poor diets.
Children admitted with diseases of the musculoskeletal system were suffering from rickets, spinal curvature and many occurrences of hip and joint necrosis and rheumatism, some of which may have been attributable to poor nutrition and some to tubercular infections.
Once the project gets under way we will provide a facility to further research and discover more fascinating insights into our relatively recent past history and further back.
FURTHER SUPPORT FOR THE PROJECT
There are many opportunities for enthusiastic volunteers to join the project. This promises to be a rewarding challenge for those with an interest in history and heritage, or in helping people. Please contact us by phone, 01483 272987, letter or email to;
If you are a charity, business or therapist please contact us to register your interest. We need long-term partners, and the Heritage Fund panel needs us to show them how we are engaging with our community.
To register an expression of interest in future use of the facilities please write to us with the following information:
1. Brief description of what you offer and the benefits to clients and customers.
2. Say if and where you currently offer this service and why people would use the cottage to meet you.
3. Brief declaration of support for the project in general.
4. Return name and address and any website or social media links.
Thank you so much! Trustees Trevor Dale – Chair; Howard Barratt; Jane Briggs; Chris Bulley; Sue Dale; Nigel West. Advisors Bob Callard – architect; Joanna James – business advisor, Michael Miller and Joy Horn, history advisors.
Visit our website: www.cranleighheritagetrust.org.uk
