GUY’S HOSPITAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19271, 8 September 1924, Page 8

GUY’S HOSPITAL.

The bi-centenary of Guy’s Hospital will bo celebrated next year. Its founder, Thomas Guy, made his fortune by investing £45,000 in the South Sea Company, and reaped immense profits by selling out before the “Bubble” burst. < With this great wealth he purchased immortality by founding a hospital “for the cure of sick and impotent persons.” Three years later, on January 6, 1725, a week after the death of its donor, “Guy’s” was opened “for the reception of 400 poor sick persons or upwards labouring under any distempers, infirmities, or disorders thought capable of relief by physick or surgery.” Next year, therefore, this groat hospital, so intimately connected with the City of London, will celebrate its bi-centonary, The Medical School associated with the hospital will at the same time achieve its centenary. ‘Guy’s” has played a very groat and distinguished part in the advance of medical and surgical knowledge. It has laid the whole world under contribution by the researches carried on within its walls on kidney and other diseases; and it is no exaggeration to say that all who enjoy today immunity from sickness, or have achieved recovery from their maladies, are in some measure its debtors. It has from the beginning played a splendid and decisive part in the history of British medi- j cine. Three separate diseases are called by the names of members of its staff who discovered them, described them, and laid the foundations of their treatment —Bright’s disease, Addison’s disease, and Hodgkin’s disease. In the work of Sir Arbuthnot Lane on fractures and in intestinal stasis its fame as a surgical centre has been .borne to the ends of the earth. The hospital has always been a favourite with students from oversea going to Britain to oualify. and thus has exercised a profund nfluehce on the medicine of the Rmpire. It stands to-dav in the forefront of the great teaching hospitals as an in--fitution perfectly equipped for the practice of modern medicine and surgery.