Worlds First skin disease hospital, 20 Moore St Another Historic First for Moore st ...yet it is up for demolition under the proposed Chartered lands shopping mall scandal In 1818, an Irish doctor, Dr William Wallace, opened a hospital for treating skin diseases at No. 20 Moore Street, Dublin. This was, according to Wallace, not only the first such establishment solely dedicated to the treatment of skin diseases in Ireland but also in the British Empire of the time, which spread across the world. In the population boom and economic crash following the Act of Union in 1800, conditions were ideal in Dublin for the spread of skin diseases, with hundreds of half-starved people crowded together in tenements with few facilities for washing or clean cooking. As well as obvious diseases such as scabies, ringworm, lice infestation, anthrax, tuberculosis of the skin and impetigo (called “running tetter” by the patients), Wallace’s Dublin Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin treated tuberculosis, measles, leprosy, scarlet fever, etc. In those unregulated days, Wallace sometimes used his poor patients as experimental subjects — for instance, infecting healthy people with syphilis (possibly without their knowledge) to determine how infectious it was. He also kept a black man at his house to study the effect of scarring on his skin. In December 1837 Wallace contracted typhus from a patient (typhus is spread by lice) and died within a week. The hospital, which was named The Dublin Infirmary for the treatment of Diseases of the Skin, was situated at No. 20 Moore Street. The street, then as now, was a commercial hub close to the centre of the city. No. 19 Moore Street was active as a printing office, while an upholsterer occupied No. 21. The Hospital was open to receive patients every morning at eleven o’clock and all were seen free of charge. Advice and medicines were given as needed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays medicated baths were administered. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays patients were treated in the “Fumigation Apparatus”, one of Wallace’s main innovations in the Dublin Infirmary. This machine (in which patients sat for 30 minutes or longer) used a special heating mechanism to saturate the skin with a vapor of sulphur, the most effective treatment available at the time for many skin diseases. In its first year of operation 1,775 patients attended The Dublin Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin in Moore Street. An analysis of the medical problems afflicting attending patients is given in the first Annual Report.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 10:58:53 +0000
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