Guy's Hospital

Guy's Hospital is a large NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in south east London. It is administratively a part of Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large teaching hospital and is home to the King's College London Schools of Medicine and Dentistry at Guy's, King's College and St Thomas's Hospitals (formerly known as the GKT School of Medicine).

History

It was founded in 1721 by Sir Thomas Guy (1644/45-December 27 1724), a publisher who had made a fortune in the South Sea Bubble. It was originally established as a hospital to treat "incurables" discharged from St Thomas' Hospital.

Guy's has expanded over the centuries. The original buildings comprised a courtyard facing St Thomas Street, and an inner quadrangle. Despite substantial bomb damage during World War II, the original 18th century chapel remains intact including the tomb of Thomas Guy with a very fine marble sculpture by John Bacon.

A bequest of £200,000 by William Hunt in 1829, one of the largest charitable bequests in England in historic terms, allowed for a further hundred beds to be accommodated. Hunt's name was given to the southern expansion of the hospital buildings. These were replaced c.2000 by new academic buildings for King's College, known as New Hunt's House.

In 1974, the hospital added the 34 storey Guy's Tower. At 143 metres (469 ft) high, this is the tallest hospital building in the world, and the 11th tallest building in London. It was designed by Watkins Gray.^[1] Guy's Tower is divided into two sections of which the top floors (floors 18-30) represent the dental school, where students of King's College London Dental School study and practice, and the lower floors (Ground-18) represent the medical departments.

The latest addition to the clinical buildings is Thomas Guy House, completed in 1995. This was originally to have been known as Philip Harris House, but the benefactor withdrew his funding in protest at the enforced merger of Guy's with St Thomas' Hospital

Over 8,000 staff work in Guy's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital. They are two of the oldest teaching hospitals, nearly 900 years old, and they are situated right in the heart of the capital. One of the services that the trust provides is dental care, looking after over 120,000 patients a year.

The site

The site consists of 19 distinct, but interconnected, buildings with functions including public medical services, teaching, research and student residence.

The buildings which compose the campus are ^[2]:

Major hospital buildings containing wards

• Guy's Tower
• New Guy's House
• Thomas Guy House

Research for the Trust's FACE wayfinding project identified that the similarity of current names led to widespread confusion for patients and visitors. From January 2008, as part of a wider project to ease wayfinding (which includes changing the postal address of the hospital from St Thomas Street to Great Maze Pond) the names of these three buildings will change:

• Guy's Tower will become Tower Wing;
• New Guy's House will become Borough Wing
• Thomas Guy House will be divided up into Southwark Wing and Bermondsey Wing.

Each wing will have a new colour coded signing system.

Other buildings

• Boland House
• Capital House
• The Chapel
• Conybeare House
• Doyles House
• Greenwood Theatre
• Henriette Raphael House
• Hodgkin Building
• Munro Centre
• New Hunt's House
• Nuffield House
• Nuffield Nurses' Home
• Old Guy's House
• Pavy Gym
• Shepherd's House
• Tabard House
• Three Tuns House
• Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases
• Wolfson House

Guy's Dental Hospital

Guy's Hospital near London Bridge (5 minutes walk from the overground/underground stations) is home to the largest dental hospital in Europe. Its services include routine dentistry, dental surgery, oral medicine and specialist dentistry. In addition Guy's also provides emergency dental services, and oral and facial surgery with the majority of work being performed by students.

Dental work involves dental surgeons, as well as dental nurses, dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental technicians; all of which are equally important to the efficiency of the hospital's dental care services.

Developments and changes

On 31 October 2005 children's departments at Guy's moved to the newly constructed Evelina Children's Hospital.

The Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases was built following a generous donation from the Wolfson Foundation. This centre brings under one roof a number of research groups dedicated to improving outcomes of conditions including Alzheimer's disease, stroke, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury.

Famous physicians who worked at Guy's

• Thomas Addison, discoverer of Addison's disease
• Thomas Hodgkin, discoverer of Hodgkin's lymphoma
• Richard Bright, discoverer of Bright's disease
• Sir Astley Cooper, discoverer of the Cooper's ligaments of the breasts
• Edward Cock, surgeon and nephew of Sir Astley Cooper
• Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin and instructor of pathology
• Sir Samuel Wilks
• Sir Alfred Poland, the first to describe Poland syndrome
• Sir Frederick Hopkins, discoverer of vitamins
• Sir William Withey Gull, the first to describe myxoedema
• James Hinton, otologist
• John Hilton, great anatomist and surgeon
• Humphry Osmond, psychiatrist who worked with psychedelic drugs and coined the term
• John Butterfield, Baron Butterfield
• Frederick William Pavy, worked with Richard Bright, one of the founders and presidents of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London
• John Braxton Hicks, obstetrician, discoverer of the Braxton Hicks uterine contractions
• Gerard Folliott Vaughan, UK psychiatrist, who became a politician and minister of state during Margaret Thatcher's government
• James Jurin, early work on epidemiology of the smallpox vaccine
• Abraham Pineo Gesner, surgeon and inventor of kerosene refining

See also

• Guy's Hospital Football Club founded in (1843) has a claim to being the oldest (rugby) football club still in existence.
• King's College London
• London Bridge Tower, a 1000 ft skyscraper being built next to Guy's
• Tall buildings in London

References

External links

• Guy's & St Thomas' Charity
• Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases

fr:Guy's Hospital