The original caption may contain language which is historic and which may no longer be considered appropriate. It has been retained in the record in the interest of historical accuracy.
The caption on the reverse of the photograph reads: “Homeopathic Hospital, Bristol. Picture shows Sisters and nurses watching the goldfish in the sunken lake in the rose garden.”
The Bristol and Clifton Homeopathic Dispensary was instituted in 1832 and homeopathic medicine had been established in Bristol since 1852. The Bristol Homeopathic Hospital was built in the early 1920s in the grounds of Cotham House. Its benefactor Walter Melville Wills commissioned it as a gift to the city of Bristol in remembrance of his son, killed in action in 1915, and thus it is sometimes known as the Bruce Melville Wills Memorial. The gardens of the hospital were laid out in 1927, in memory of Walter Melville Wills fourth son, Harold Edgar Melville Wills, who died in 1925. The garden overlaid an earlier 19th century garden, and was centred around a small rose garden. Walter Melville Wills had been a homeopathic patient, and the treatment experienced an increase in popularity in Bristol in the early 1900s. In 1941 the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital had 110 beds and treated approximately 980 new inpatients and the same number of new outpatients; the following year, with 112 beds, approximately 1,300 new inpatients and 2,600 new outpatients were treated. The hospital was bombed during the Second World War, and in 1948 it joined the NHS. The inpatient facilities were transferred from the hospital to the Bristol Eye Hospital in 1986 and treatment at the Cotham site officially stopped in 2015, partly in response to a campaign against the public funding of homeopathic treatment. See also MED01/01/1861-1863, MED01/01/1873 and MED01/01/1875-1881. High-resolution copies of this image are available for free for non-commercial use. Please Enquire to place an order.
This is part of the Series: MED01/01 Series of prints; within the Collection: MED01 Topical Press Agency Medical Collection
Source: Historic England Archive
Photographer: Topical Press Agency Limited
Photographer: Harrison, Norman Kingsley
Pond, Rose Garden, Homoeopathic Hospital, Women's History, Health And Welfare
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