A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 5, 6 July 1921, Page 6

A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR

SIR E. CASSEL'S £225,000 GIFT

HOSPITAL FOR NERVOUS

DISORDERS.

(FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 9th May.

In 1911, in memory of his daughter, Sir Ernest Cassel gave to the King Edward Hospital Fund , for London the sum of £50,CC0. In 1915 he repeated this donation, in the form of War Loan Stock,/and six days later he gave to tho British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John Wai Loan to the value of £25,000., This latter gift.was repeated in 1916, and other additions were made to it. Sir Ernest Cassel also helped to found tho Radium Institute, Mid in 1910 he bought for £15,000 one gramme of radium for tliat centre. There is, moreover, fresh in the public memory his donation of £500,000 in 1919 towards the promotion of education for adult workers, and now he has devoted the munificent sum of £225,000 to the object of founding and endowing a hospital, or sanitorium, for the treatment of functional nervous disorders. The hospital will be situated at Penshurst, in Kent, where Sir Edward has purchased ii fine mansion and park, standing in ideal surroundings. The house has been reconstructed, and will accommodate some sixty patients. It is.primary ily intended for those members of the educated classes who are. Enable to meet tho heavy expenses associate!! with care and treatment in a nursing home. The upkeep of the institution and the treatment of the patients have been largely provided for by the generosity of the founder, but a charge of about £5 per week will be made to each patient as a contribution to maintenance.

Swaylandis,. the name of the property, will be the first hospital, to devote itself solely to the functional nervous disorders of which neurasthenia is the predominant example. "Out aim," says the medical director (Dr. T. A. Ross, who lias had a wide experience of diseases of the nervous system), "is to enable a patient to overcome the difficulties of life. We shall give him as many occupations as practicable—gardening, carpentry, tennis, a private golf course, bowls, a dancing room, and probably a debating society. ' We have no fads;" The Kinjr and Queen have consented to become Patron aaid Patroness of the hospital.

Largely the result of the stress and turmoil of modern life, nervous troubles are, unfortunately, of great frequency, and a.re accompanied by much suffering, a.nd followed, not uncommonly, by disastrous mental and physical consequences. Subjects of these, disorders often become incapacitated and remain so for want of the (Particular treatment they require, and for which scarcely any facilities exist at the present moment. These disorders are, however, amenable to medical treatment under fa.TOUxable conditions, and it' is to provide such means of cuTe, and further to cxpa.nd and elaborate them, that the present institution lias been founded. It is a unique enterprise, which caMot fail, to advance an imDortamt branch of mediotoo and be of infinite service to the subjects of a distressing form of disease.