Royal Naval Hospital Haslar

Royal Hospital Haslar
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
Royal Hospital Haslar
Geography
Location	Gosport, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
Organisation
Care system	Public NHS
Hospital type	Military / NHS
Services
Beds	Up to 350
History
Founded	1753
Closed	2009
Links
Website	http://www.porthosp.nhs.uk Trust
Lists	Hospitals in England

Coordinates: 50°47′10″N 1°07′26″W / 50.786°N 1.124°W / 50.786; -1.124

Founded in the reign of King George I, the Royal Hospital Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire, was one of several hospitals serving the Portsmouth Urban Area, but had previously been the country's foremost – and ultimately last – military hospital. Its military status was withdrawn in 2007, and those military personnel remaining joined the Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit (MDHU Portsmouth) at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, Portsmouth. In the summer of 2009, all remaining (civilian) medical services at Haslar were relocated to the Queen Alexandra Hospital, and the site was subsequently sold.

The Royal Military Hospital Haslar had a number of notable specialist medical facilities, including a decompression chamber and a zymotic isolation ward.

The Royal Hospital Haslar was designed by Theodore Jacobsen and built between 1745 and 1761. The site opened as a Royal Naval Hospital in 1754. On completion it was the largest brick building in Europe, and the largest hospital in England. Building works cost more than £100,000, nearly double the cost of the Admiralty headquarters in London.

Patients usually arrived by boat (it was not until 1795 that a bridge was built over Haslar Creek, providing a direct link to Gosport). The high brick walls and railings surrounding the site were designed to stop patients from going absent without leave. Dr James Lind (1716–1794), a leading physician at Haslar from 1758 till 1785, played a major part in discovering a cure for scurvy, not least through his pioneering use of a double blind methodology with Vitamin C supplements (limes). The hospital included an asylum for sailors with psychiatric disorders, and an early superintending psychiatrist was the phrenologist, Dr James Scott (1785–1859), a member of the influential Edinburgh Phrenological Society.