Christie Hospital

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is located in Withington, Manchester, and is one of the largest cancer treatment centres in Europe. The Christie became a NHS Foundation Trust in April 2007 and is also an international leader in cancer research and development, and home to the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research.

The hospital had its beginnings in the largesse of Sir Joseph Whitworth, a wealthy Mancunian inventor who left money in his will in 1887. He wanted this to be spent on good causes in Manchester and entrusted his bequest to three legatees, one of whom was Richard Copley Christie. Consequently, some of that money was used to buy land off Oxford Road, adjacent to Owens College and intended to allow the movement of the central Manchester hospitals out of the crowded city centre. A committee chaired by Christie was established in 1890 and, partly funded by a legacy of £10,000 from Daniel Proctor, a Cancer Pavilion and Home for Incurables was founded on the site in 1892 some distance south-east of the eye hospital. In 1901 it was renamed the Christie Hospital in honour of Richard Christie and his wife Mary. It was the only hospital outside London for the treatment of cancer alone and active in pathological research.

In 1901, the Christie Management Committee agreed to the request of Dr Robert Biggs Wild to spend £50 on the equipment necessary to test the efficacy of X ray treatment, after promising results reported from London and from three patients treated in the Physics Laboratory of Professor Schuster locally in Owens College. The Roentgen apparatus was purchased, but no records survive of treatment, and by 1907 the equipment was no longer being used (it was given to the Skin Hospital in 1910). By 1905, Dr Wild had become interested in the therapeutic use of the newly discovered radium and experimented, once more with aid from Professor Schuster, on three patients. Radium was expensive, however, and the management refused to purchase any more until the results of tests from London hospitals were available. By 1914, a leading local doctor, Sir William Milligan, had begun a campaign in the 'Manchester Guardian' to raise funds for radium treatment. Appealing to a mixture of local pride and the contemporary enthusiasm for the curative powers of radium, an appeal was launched, on the advice of Ernest Rutherford, for £25,000. An initial contribution of £2000 from local brewer Edward Holt was not initially much emulated, but following the intervention of the Mayor, a series of 'Radium days' were organized which eventually raised enough money to start a small Radium Institute, initially housed in the Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1921 it moved to new premises in Nelson Street donated by Sir Edward and Lady Holt, and became the Manchester and District Radium Institute. By contrast with the dispersed and competitive provision of London radiotherapy, Manchester became the first provider of a centralised radiotherapy service, which would have long-lasting effects on the patterns of British cancer care.

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