Horton Hospital

Horton Hospital formerly called Horton Asylum was a large psychiatric hospital in Epsom, Surrey. The hospital was designed for the London County Council by George Thomas Hine, consultant architect to the Commissioners in Lunacy to the London County Council), following a Compact Arrow plan first used at Bexley Asylum at Bexley in Kent. It was opened in 1902 and was the second hospital in the Epsom Cluster, a group of five mental institutions on the Horton Estate to the west of Epsom.

During the two World Wars the hospital was commandeered as a military hospital and the existing patients were transferred elsewhere. The hospital was notable for its pioneering work in music therapy and the treatment of advanced syphilis and paedophilia.

For much of the 20th century the hospital played an important role in the development of induced malaria treatment as cure for general paralysis of the insane, a form of advanced syphilis. The treatment involved infecting patients with malaria which caused a high fever meant to kill the spirochetes which caused the disease.

A laboratory based in the 14-bed isolation unit became a national centre for mosquito breeding and sent infected mosquitoes to all British hospitals which used the treatment. By the 1970s the unit had become the World Health Organisation's Regional Malarial Centre for Europe but was rendered obsolete in 1975 by the increasing use of penicillin to treat syphilitic symptoms.

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