Additional Material
Archives
The archives at the London are among the biggest and best preserved in the world. Stone City Films researchers, Heather Forrester and Suzy Strong spent a year researching the archives. Fantastic old leather bound hand written books. They claim to have unearthed enough interesting material for a ten part series. Ultimately, of course you have to narrow it down to the handful of patients, doctors and nurses whose stories encapsulate the times. Sometimes you could be weeping over the cases that come up.
So many illnesses that we don’t have today - a lot of childhood rheumatism, diptheria, measles, polio so many killer diseases which today are prevented by vaccination or treated with antibiotics.
The parallels with MRSA and drug resistant TB - the endless cleaning that went on to prevent infection. Under matrons instruction, whole wards would be closed for two weeks whilst every inch of the place was disinfected every bed sterilised, the linen burned. Many might say, lessons for today
Finding Authentic Equipment
The London Hospital was famous for its pioneering use of X Rays. Ernest Wilson (played by JASON WATKINS) was one of the X Ray martyrs , one of the early radiographers who died from radiation poisoning. Ernest had to have most of his fingers amputated, later his arms: a result of using his hands to calibrate the machine every time it was used.
The early radiographers gradually became aware of this effect on themselves but still continued to pioneer the use of the machine since they understood how valuable it was in treating patients.
The problem was finding an authentic machine to use for the filming: it was eventually provided by Dr Adrian Thomas, a consultant radiologist in Oxford and leading expert on the history of X-rays who had one in his garage and helpfully provided it with detailed knowledge on its use.