I was fascinated today to come across a sidelight on the psychology of welfare before the welfare state.

I was doing a check on the history of Moorfields, the eye hospital. The hospital's own website reveals how it was set up explicitly for the poor. It also shows how it was consider utterly wrong for those who could afford to pay for medical care to take advantage of its free services:

The London Dispensary for curing diseases of the Eye and Ear was opened in 1805 by John Cunningham Saunders (1773-1810). The impetus for the formation of the world's first specialist eye hospital seems to have been an epidemic of trachoma. This is a form of potentially blinding tropical conjunctivitis which was brought back to England by British troops returning from the Napoleonic wars in Egypt. However, the number of patients seeking treatment steadily increased, forcing a move to a larger site in 1822 and finally to its present main site on City Road, central London, in 1899. At this time, the first specialist departments were set up (X ray and Ultra Violet treatment rooms). The hospital was still operating as a charity and each patient received an admission card that read:

'This letter is granted to the applicant in being poor. Its acceptance therefore by anyone not really poor constitutes an abuse of charity.'

Additional:

I notice that the Moorfields website includes guidance on waiting times. They are pretty daunting if you add, as it seems you should, the waiting time for the first appointment to the waiting time for sugery. For glaucoma, for instance, the total waiting time is over six months.

I wonder what the waiting times were like before the NHS took over the management of the hospital? I wonder what the waiting times are like now in other comparable countries in Europe and in America and Japan?

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Charity • NHS

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