A history of The Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital 1874–1982

Abstract

PrefaceThis history of the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital at Gray's Inn Road formed the core of a thesis submitted to the Open University for a Doctorate of Philosophy and is not an official history. I was encouraged to give it wider circulation particularly by Sir Donald Harrison and Mr Edward Donald. The Special Trustees of the Hospital have most generously sponsored this supplement which I hope will serve to provide some interest to those who have worked at Gray's Inn Road. I must begin with an apology as it does not attempt to record the achievements of all the staff at the RNTNE and many eminent contributors to the success of the Hospital have been omitted either through my own ignorance or through lack of space to cover all areas of the Hospital's development. I have been fortunate in obtaining both written and oral historical memoirs from retired doctors, nurses, administrators and technicians who worked for many years at Gray' Inn Road. I would like particularly to thank Peter Zwarts, librarian of the Institute of Laryngology and Otology, and the librarians at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and the Guildhall. I would like to thank Andrew Gardner of the ILO for a number of the illustrations. In particular I would like to thank my OU supervisor, Dr Noel Coley, for his patience and encouragement.