The Strangeways Research Laboratory: archives in the contemporary medical archives centre.

The Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cambridge, an independent research institution of world-wide renown, was founded as the Cambridge Research Hospital in 1905. The Contemporary Medical Archives Centre at the Wellcome Institute holds the important archive of the Strangeways itself (which includes papers of its founder, Thomas Strangeways Pigg Strangeways, 1866-1926), and also the papers of the Director from 1929 to 1970, Dame Honor Bridget Fell (1900-1986), and of the radiologist Frederick Gordon Spear (1895-1980), Deputy Director from 1931 to 1958, as well as a smaller group of papers of Alfred Glucksmann (1904-1985), who worked at the Strangeways. There is, additionally, a group of files among the papers of Sir Peter Medawar (1915-1987) reflecting his involvement as one of the trustees of the Strangeways between 1962 and 1985. Honor Fell's correspondence with Sir Edward Mellanby and other collaborators in their joint research on the effects of Vitamin A on skeletal development is to be found among the Mellanby papers.1 The laboratory was the brainchild ofT S P Strangeways, demonstrator and later lecturer in Pathology at Cambridge. He was convinced that the knowledge of disease could best be advanced by studying it as it occurred within the living human body, and determined on investigating rheumatoid arthritis and allied conditions. Largely funded by himself, with support from colleagues, a research hospital was opened in 1905. A Committee for the Study of Special Diseases was set up to support the work by participating in the research and in raising money: over the years the Trustees included several distinguished medical men, such as Sir Clifford Allbutt, Sir Thomas Barlow, Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, Sir Victor Horsley, Sir Charles Martin, Sir William Osler and Sir Humphry Rolleston. Patients were not charged fees but most, grateful for the care and attention, gave donations on leaving. Strangeways also maintained relations with other hospitals for the purposes of obtaining data on rheumatoid patients. Due to lack of funds, the hospital was forced to close in 1908, but re-opened the following year. An appeal for building larger premises was launched (Figure 1) and in 1912 these were opened as the Cambridge Research Hospital (during the First World War this served as a small hospital for officers, financially supported by Otto Beit, resuming