LONDON STATUES - MEDICINE
LONDON STATUES - MEDICINE
Harvey discovered the circulation of blood, proving that the heart acts as a pump moving blood continuously around the body. His work overturned centuries of medical belief based on Galen and marked a turning point toward modern experimental medicine.
Burlington House, Burlington Gardens
Harvey's ideas were initially considered heretical, but he went on to serve as physician to King Charles I. He refined his theories by dissecting deer carcasses obtained during Charles's hunting expeditions. Progressive for his time, he was sceptical of witchcraft accusation. In 1643, four women accused of witchcraft were acquitted as a consequence of William Harvey's testimony.
Lincoln's Inn Fields Huntarian Museum
St George's Hospital, Tooting
Hunter's most notorious experiment involved injecting himself with material from a patient with venereal disease (to “prove” gonorrhoea and syphilis were the same illness - a conclusion now known to be wrong). Hunter insisted he contracted venereal disease by self-experiment - a claim that has been accepted by historians, if not necessarily by his wife, the poet Anne Home Hunter. That said, 18th-century medical self-experimentation was oddly admired. It was seen as proof of commitment and courage rather than madness.
Hunter's house in Leicester Square house is said to have been the inspiration for the home of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll.
John Hunter's vast collection of 14,000 specimens became the Hunterian Museum.
The Huntarian Museum
The museum opened at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1813 and today holds over 70,000 items .....
The Long Gallery (specimen heaven)
The bust in this display case is of John Hunter.
The portrait of Hunter seen here is by Joshua Reynolds
Other surgical pioneers honoured at the Huntarian include .....
Working at St Bartholomew’s Hospital for over four decades, Percivall Pott was a key figure in establishing surgery as a scientific profession rather than a brutal trade. He became renowned for his careful observation, clear writing and humane approach to patients at a time when surgery was still performed without anaesthetic or antiseptics. He was an early critic of amputation-happy surgeons, favouring conservative treatment when possible. Pott's name survives in several conditions, including Pott’s fracture of the ankle and Pott’s disease, the spinal tuberculosis he was the first to describe clearly (in English, not Latin). Pott also described chimney sweeps’ cancer, linking scrotal cancer to soot exposure - one of the earliest demonstrations of occupational cancer.
Described as "the fastest knife in the West End", Robert Liston could amputate a leg in less than three minutes. This dexterity was considered invaluable at a time when speed in the operating theatre was essential to minimise pain and improve the odds of a patient's survival.
Whilst he was considered a virtuoso in the operating theatre, his "most famous case" was far from his most successful. Liston's patient, having had his leg amputated in under 2½ minutes, later died from hospital gangrene, as did Liston's young assistant after losing some fingers during the procedure. In addition, Liston also slashed through the coat tails of a spectator - who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals, died of shock. This whole episode (unconfirmed by any primary sources) has been dubbed as the only known surgery in history with a 300 per cent mortality rate.
Despite this, Liston later went on to perform his "second most famous case" - the first major surgical operation in Europe using ether as an anaesthetic.
Admission to the Huntarian (not recommended for the squeamish) is free - it is advisable to book on line.
Jenner was a protégée of John Hunter at St George's Hospital in Tooting. He is best remembered as the pioneer of vaccination. In 1796, he demonstrated that inoculation with cowpox could protect against the far deadlier smallpox, a disease responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Despite fierce opposition and ridicule, Jenner’s work laid the foundations of immunology and eventually led to the global eradication of smallpox in 1980 - one of medicine’s greatest achievements.
St George's Hospital, Tooting
The statue shows Edward Jenner holding a model of the vaccina virus which causes cowpox. The word vaccination, coined by Jenner, comes from vacca, Latin for cow.
Italian Gardens, Kensington Gardens
Jenner’s
statue was originally placed in Trafalgar Square before being re-located to
Kensington Gardens in 1862 to make way for a statue of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock. Punch magazine reflected on this controversial move with a pointed poem:
England, ingratitude still blots
The escutcheon of the brave and free;
I saved you many million spots
And now you grunge one spot to me
Jenner first tested his hypothesis in 1796 by inoculating James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener - and then exposing the boy to smallpox. Oddly, he became a member of the Royal Society for his paper on the nesting habits of cuckoos, not his medical work.
Lister transformed surgery by introducing antiseptic techniques. Building on Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory, Lister used carbolic acid (now known as phenol) to sterilise wounds, instruments, and operating theatres, dramatically reducing post-operative infections. Before antisepsis, around half of all surgical patients died
from infection.
Portland Place
The Portland Place statue is close to Lister's home in 12 Park Crescent. The figures at the base are a young woman, representing Humanity, and a boy with a bunch of flowers.
National Portrait Gallery Huntarian Museum
There were no thorough clinical trials in Lister's day - he presumed carbolic acid was safe because fields treated with it produced no apparent ill-effects on grazing livestock. His ideas were initially dismissed as unnecessary fuss. Lister was surgeon to Queen Victoria and later Edward II. The antiseptic Listerine was named in his honour.
St Mary's Hospital, Paddington
Fleming was famously untidy, which was crucial to his discovery. His (untidy) laboratory in St Mary's Hospital has been restored to look like it did in 1928 when he made his historic discovery. The Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum is open to walk-in visitors and free of charge.
Fleming couldn't produce enough of his antibiotic for clinical trials. This didn't happen until 1941 - undertaken by the Americans during World War II.
Alexander Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Florey and Chain. And he recently had a Wetherspoons named after him.
St Thomas's Hospital
Guy’s Hospital trained generations of famous doctors and became closely associated with St Thomas's. The statue was almost removed because of Clayton's historical links to the slave trade. He made much of his money in banking which he then invested in colonial businesses. Thomas Guy was an English bookseller, investor, and philanthropist best remembered as the founder of Guy’s Hospital. Living frugally himself, Guy directed most of his wealth towards charitable causes, culminating in the establishment of Guy’s Hospital in 1721 to care for the “incurables” discharged from other London hospitals. He died unmarried, leaving one of the largest charitable bequests of the age.
Guy's Hospital
Starting out as a modest bookseller near Lombard Street, he made his fortune printing and selling Bibles and prayer books, then multiplied it spectacularly through shrewd investments in South Sea Company stock - and cashing in before the South Sea Bubble crash in 1720.
In 1721, Guy donated over £18,000 to build Guy's Hospital for people with no likelihood of recovery at St Thomas'. He gave the hospital a further £200,000 (around £50 million today) in his will for its continued work.
Both Guy and Clayton have more recently found themselves drawn into the modern reassessment of Britain’s public statuary. In each case, their statues were at one point threatened with removal because of indirect links to slavery. In neither case was there evidence of personal involvement in the slave trade, and it was decided any such associations could sit alongside - rather than outweigh - the very real and lasting good both men did, particularly in the field of healthcare.
Florence Nightingale transformed nursing and hospital care during the
Crimean War through improved sanitation, hygiene and record-keeping. Her work
dramatically reduced death rates and laid the foundations of modern nursing.
Her statues usually depict her as the “Lady with
the Lamp”, making night-time rounds among wounded soldiers.
Waterloo Place (Guards Crimean War Memorial on the right)
St Thomas' Hospital Guildhall Art Gallery
National Portrait Gallery
Florence Nightingale was also a gifted mathematician and invented the polar area diagram (a kind of pie chart). An example can be seen in the British Library .....
..... her Rose Diagram or Coxcomb Chart from Crimea shows mortality rates radiating from a centre point with sectors showing causes of death (like infection vs wounds).
Florence Nightingale founded a nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital. She disliked sentimental portrayals of herself and refused a burial in Westminster Abbey. A British-Jamaican nurse, healer, and entrepreneur, Seacole provided care to wounded soldiers during the Crimean War using a blend of traditional remedies and practical nursing. She established a warzone pop-up clinic - The British Hotel - near the front lines; and became a forces favourite.
A Red Cross nurse during the First World War, Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans for helping around two hundred Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium. Her death caused international outrage and made her a powerful symbol of courage, compassion, and moral conviction.
St Thomas' Hospital St Mary’s Square, Paddington
After a long campaign, her statue was unveiled at St Thomas' Hospital in 2016. The disc was cast from Crimean rock. Having been refused official nursing roles, Mary funded the mission herself, combining Caribbean and European medicine. She was also a smart businesswoman - whilst in Crimea she had a nice little money-spinner selling rations to the troops. Seacole is said to have given assistance on the battlefields after 'serving wine and sandwiches to spectators'.
Mary Seacole published the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain - Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. In 2004, she was voted the greatest Black Briton in a survey by the black heritage website Every Generation.
A Red Cross nurse during the First World War, Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans for helping around two hundred Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium. Her death caused international outrage and made her a powerful symbol of courage, compassion, and moral conviction.
St Martin's Place
Cavell, who had treated wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination, insisted she had no hatred for her captors. Her last words before facing the firing squad were "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone". These words are engraved on her monument which was paid for by readers of The Daily Telegraph.
One of Britain’s first female surgeons, Aldrich-Blake specialised in cancer surgery and was instrumental in opening the medical profession to women.
Tavistock Square
This Grade II listed memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens. Unveiled in 1927, it comprises two identical busts of Aldrich-Blake by Arthur George Walker.
The first surgeon to perform operations for cervical and rectal cancers, Louisa Aldrich-Blake was also a supporter of the suffragettes and treated those injured in protests.
Adelaide Road, NW3
The statue is near 20 Maresfield Gardens where Freud spent his last years. It is now the home of the Freud Museum.
Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the Freud Wars. Unfortunately, where huge strides continue to be made in fixing human bodies, human brains remain an inscrutable problem, just as evident today as when Freud escaped Nazi Austria in 1938.
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