Charles Dickens' work to help establish Great Ormond Street Hospital,London

Abstract

When teaching our students about the medical ramifications of poverty and the importance of child advocacy, we could do no better than to point them in the direction of Charles Dickens (figure 1), England's celebrated novelist and social reformer. The reading of just a few of his novels, and the biting essays he composed for his weekly magazines, Household Words (1850–58) and All the Year Round (1859–70), shows that rarely have children had a more eloquent or effective proponent. Here I shall discuss one example of Dickens' broad-based activism on behalf of children—the establishment of London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. 1 Kosky J Mutual friends. Charles Dickens and the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. St Martin's Press, New York1989 Google Scholar I choose this episode from his life because it exemplifies so well his deep sense of civic responsibility, his love of children, and his keen understanding of the need for a special place to care for sick children. It is also an exemplary model of conduct in health-care advocacy for today's medical professional.