History of Fever Treatment in London

Abstract

IN an article entitled “Willan and Bateman on Fevers” in the October issue of the British Journal of Dermatology, Dr. J. D. Rolleston maintains that Robert Willan (1757-1812), in addition to being the father of British dermatology, was also a pioneer in epidemiology at a time when infectious diseases were more prevalent and severe than at the present day. In addition to his work on vaccination, of which he was a warm advocate, and his observations on scarlet fever and measles, by his work on cutaneous diseases and his reports on diseases in London in 1796-1800, Willan played a prominent part in the establishment of the first fever hospital in London. Apart from the smallpox hospital at King's Cross, which had been in existence since 1746, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, London did not possess a fever hospital of any kind, and it was mainly in consequence of the prevalence of typhus fever at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries that hospitals under the name of ‘houses of recovery’ were established throughout the country. They were first opened at Chester, Manchester, Liverpool, Norwich, Hull, Dublin, Cork and Waterford, and later, owing to the advocacy of Willan and other distinguished physicians, the example set by the provinces was followed by London. In 1802 the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor fitted up in Gray's Inn Road a private house as a hospital for poor patients, to which Willan was appointed the first physician, and was succeeded two years later by Bateman, who held the post for twelve years.