NOTABLE GIFT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23431, 22 August 1939, Page 11

NOTABLE GIFT

£IOO,OOO FOE HOSPITAL TREATMENT OF CRIPPLES CHILD PARALYSIS CASES > ' SIR A. MACLEAN DONOR [from ottr own correspondent] LONDON, Aug. 3 A sum of £IOO,OOO lias been given by Sir Alexander Maclean —the Scottish millionaire who spent his youth in New Zealand—to the Lord Mayor Treloar Cripples' Hospital for the construction of a new seaside branch of the hospital at Sandy Point, Hayling Island, Hampshire. For a number of years helpful treatments in the sea hare been given at Hayling to little patients, who have been taken out by attendant bearers in stretcher nets and dipped in the sea. Braziers on the beach, protected from winds by movable screens, have prevented the children from taking chills, and very valuable results have been obtained. Methods In America This new hospital in the sun belt of the South Coast, however, is something different and much more up-to-date. The main Treloar Hospital is at Alton, Hants. Hayling is a seaside branch. Accompanied by Sir Henry Gauvain, medical superintendent of the hospital, Sir Alexander recently visited America to study liydrotherapeutic treatment (under-water gymnastics) for infantile paValysis and other crippling conditions. So impressed was lio with this method of treatment and its manifold advantages that ho determined that English sufferers should have similar facilities, and the new Marine Hospital will be specially and fully equipped for this purpose. It is proposed to build the new hospital at Hayling Island with therapeutic pools and sea-water baths designed on the latest scientific principles. Long and Expert Oara ~

An iron lung may resuscitate a patient attacked by infantile paralysis %vith accompanying respiratory failure, but final recovery entails prolonged and expert after-care. Often patients are left with limbs so weak that they cannot move them against the resistance of tlio beds on which they recline. It is primarily to help such sufferers that this new hospital is being designed, and child patients from any hospital in the British Empire requiring special treatment will be eligible for admission. Sir Alexander's charitable gifts, both national and local, are notable. He gave £IO,OOO to the Royal Victoria and West Hants Hospital, Bournemouth, and also £SOOO to the fund raised to provide a cancer treatment centre in that hospital. He also gave the hall in the Eventide Homes, Castle Lane, Bournemouth. He financed the first laboratories for the Empire Rheumatism Council, St. John's Wood, London, where he maintains three research specialists. He also gave £IO,OOO to the Hampstead Hospital and £SOOO to the I Letchworth Cottage Hospital.