Abstract
The essay 1 on the inception of Mr Guy's hospital by Professor Jones is of interest as it describes arrangements in which a celebrated period of English philanthropy founded one of the longest-surviving and most influential of the voluntary hospitals of London, but while the foundation of Guy's was unparalleled, its demise shared the common lot of the voluntary hospitals of London: something also of interest.
The events leading up to this dissolution are in Dr Cameron's book. 2 Despite careful management of the huge bequest the cost of treating each patient increased at an accelerating rate throughout the hospital's history, so subscriptions had to be sought to supplement Guy's legacy. The hospital became encumbered with debt and, along with the other voluntary hospitals, it was eventually seized by the State; then, despite a public outcry, not least from the people of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe where money had been collected to endow a ward in memory of their war dead, its acute services were moved elsewhere.
The Prince of Wales had warned in 1924 that in addition to meeting other costs hospitals had to keep pace with the needs of patients and the development of medical science. Guy's was unable to do this, in part because developing its specialist services had been a heavy burden on the hospital treasury. Dr Cameron wrote ‘The contributions of the sympathizers with suffering could no longer keep pace with these new powers to recognize and control disease. It had become all too evident that the cost of a hospital had no limit.’
Thus, at the start Guy's was assisted by timely disinvestment from a bubble in new markets, and at the end Guy's was left vulnerable by an untimely lack of investment during an enthusiasm for using hospitals, perhaps another unsustainable bubble.
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