The Old Infirmary, Chester
Grid reference: SJ401660
Co-ordinates: 340168, 366068
Bearing: ENE
Chester Royal Infirmary stood on this site on City Walls Road until 1993 when, after 230 years, the medical facilities were moved across to the Countess Of Chester Hospital to the north-west of the city. The modern buildings around it were then removed and the original 18th century building restored to the way we see it today.
It was here that the physician John Haygarth first had the thought of segregating patients with such highly-contagious diseases as typhus from the rest of the hospital's intake and this - allied with a rigorous attention to hygiene - cut the death rates from those conditions in very short order. Haygarth's regime was soon widely adopted elsewhere.
© Nigel Stapley