THE VERY FACULTIES: A short history of the Development of Opthalmological and Otorhinolaryngological Services in Belfast (1801-1964) with special reference to the Belfast General Hospital, Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Victoria Street, Benn Ulster Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital

Opthalmological and Otorhinolaryngological Services in Belfast (1801-1964) with special reference to the Belfast General Hospital, Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Victoria Street, Benn Ulster Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. By R. S. Allison, V.R.D., M.D., F.R.C.P., D.P.M. (Pp. xiii+ 114; figs. 18). Belfast: Belfast Hospital Management Committee, 1969. IN all hospitals, due to the rapidly changing personnel, a new addition is soon absorbed into the general structure of the building and what was there before is soon forgotten. The new Eye and Ear Clinic at the Royal Victoria Hospital is now recognised as one of the best of its kind in the three Kingdoms. Dr. R. S. Allison, V.R.D., M.D., F.R.C.P., in "The Very Faculties", traces the origin, the progress and the problems of the three small constituent units in the Benn Hospital, Clifton, in the Ophthalmic Hospital, Great Victoria Street, and in the Eye and Ear Unit in the Belfast General Hospital, later Royal Victoria Hosptial until they were all three amalgamated into this one new department. Dr. Allison has covered the field in a way that will delight all medical historians. In Belfast, with Dr. Malcolm, Dr. Marshall, Dr. Strain and Dr. Calwell, we have been more fortunate than many other cities. This book points out how much we have benefited from the generosity and business ability of our wealthy principal citizens The Benns, The Dixons, The Barbours, The Clarks. A delightful sketch is given of the leading medical figures of that time, on whose shoulders "these faculties" were raised to their present level. We can see Dr. Allison's own personality, with its love of the sea and adventure, instinctively drawn to men like Dr. Samuel Browne, who after long service in the Royal Navy became our leading eye specialist, later to become Mayor of Belfast. He in turn was followed by another adventurous spirit, Dr. Nelson, who fought with Garribaldi through the Sicilian Campaign but after that spent fifteen years in India as a tea planter before coming back to Belfast to amass the largest consultant practice of that time. On the purely scientific side we must admire MacKeown (1874) who had an international reputation for his operation for removal of the immature cataract: for the use of the electromagnet for the removal of metal fragments in the eye (so useful in our heavy steel industry in Belfast): for his suggestion of a plastic substance (collodion) to make an artificial eardrum: for his courage to approach the oesophagus through an incision in the neck. He was a man well in advance of his time. He appreciated the value of the day-room for up patients a facility still missing in many places. He insisted on an antiseptic chamber for operations, as suggested in New York the forerunner of the modern aseptic operating theatre. Dr. Allison regrets the changing face of the visiting consultants the frock coat, the tall hat he describes Sir John Walton Browne as being "The Last of the Dandies". This book is not solely the history of progress in disease of the eye and car, nose and throat, but it covers part of the early history of the medical school of Belfast. It is a first class production, delightfully written, with a mass of detail. It is not only a book of reference but a book to enjoy. It gives us a foretaste of another book soon to be in the hands of the printers, when Dr. Allison will fill in the period 1850-1900 completing the trilogy of Malcolm, Allison and Marshall on the history of the Belfast General Hospital. The Belfast Medical School should be most grateful that our archivist has found time to give us this valuable and delightful book. I.F.