Appeal on behalf of the Samaritan Free Hospital by Lady GEORGE HAMILTON
THE SAMARITAN FREE HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN, for which an Appeal is to be made this evening, was founded in 1847. It was of lowly origin and would perhaps have remained in obscurity but for the fact that in 1854 it annexed a moribund Institution called the Marylebone Dispensary and with it acquired the services of a young surgeon named T. Spencer Wells. In 1858 he performed his first successful abdominal operation, the first for 10 years in any London Hospital. That was the beginning of a long series of successful operations which startled the surgical world and brought doctors from all parts of the Globe to learn his technique. No longer, fortunately, has the Samaritan Free Hospital a monopoly of success in these operations, but it still remains in the van, for in December, 1927, the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health reported to the Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain that ' it is gratifying to be able to state that, in the group of records examined relating to nearly 900 patients treated at the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women during the period 1901 to 1920, the results obtained by operative methods were at least as good as, and in respect of operative- mortality better than, the average of those obtained by massing the experience of all surgeons at home and abroad who have published their results.'
Donations should be sent to [address removed].
(London only)