OPENING OF A HOSPITAL

Otago Witness, Issue 3612, 5 June 1923, Page 23

OPENING OF A HOSPITAL

MR ROCKEFELLER'S GENEROSITY LONDON, Alav 31.

.The King and Queen Hid the foundation stone of the Obstetric Hospital, and opened the anatomy building in connection with University College. These are the first fruits of “a gift of £1,200,00-0 front the Rockefeller Foundation. The King said that it was the first time that any medical foundation had re ceived over £1,000,000 from a •single benefactor. The gift was more impressive because it was bestowed by a citizen of the United States upon the people of Great Britain.

The King added that the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation were largely influenced by the fact that the unit system of medical teaching had been established by the University College, by means of which the chief branches of medical education were under heads who could devote their whole time to teaching, to research, and to hospital practice. This was a substantial development in the traditional British system, which entrusts the clinical teaching to doctors who are also private practitioners.

It is estimated that the total amount given by Air J. D. Rockefeller for philanthropic and charitable purposes up to 1921 exceeded £120,000,000. Nearly four-fifths of this has gone to the four great charitable corporations which he created—the Rockefeller Foundation, the General Education Board, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and the Rockefeller Institute for Aledical Research.