G218 CHILD HEALTH CARE: NORTHAMPTON GENERAL INFIRMARY, 1744

A. Williams.Centre for the History of Medicine, Birmingham University, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Summary: The 1744 Northampton General Infirmary hospital admission records give a flavour of eighteenth century child health care.

We tend to think the commencement of hospitalised children’s services within the United Kingdom sprung from the foundation of Great Ormond Street (1852) and other children’s hospitals from the mid nineteenth century onwards.

However this is not the case. For more than a century before the opening of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, children in England were treated and even admitted in Voluntary Hospitals inspite of rules prohibiting such care. The earliest English eighteenth century records, that contain the patient’s age, are held in Northampton. Reviewing records from the Northampton General Infirmary (from 1903 the Northampton General Hospital) for the period 1744–45 gives a flavour of hospital child health care in an era before the formal recognition of paediatrics as a medical specialty and the construction of specialist provision. Indeed the first patient admitted to the Northampton General Infirmary on 29 March 1744 was Thomasin Grace, a 13 year old child.

This paper using material from the hospital register of 1744 will review some of the inpatient and outpatient cases treated and the background to being an inpatient in England in the mid eighteenth century. Although the medical notes have not survived and we can only speculate about the treatments that we given, nevertheless the presentations and their outcomes at discharge still resonate with contemporary child health practitioners.

G219 WILLIAM CADOGAN: AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COMMON SENSE GUIDE TO CHILDCARE

A. Levene¹, M. Levene².¹Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom; ²University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

William Cadogan, an eighteenth century London medical practitioner, and expert on gout, published a short pamphlet in 1748 entitled An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children …