Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2098

HENRY CHARLES BURDETT (1847-1920) Cottage hospitals. Presley Blakiston 1880 2nd ed. xxii [2] 550 [6] pp., 15 plates (9 fold., front. (port.)), plans, tables. 18.2 cm.

Burdett began his career in 1863 as a bank worker in London. In 1868 he became director of Queen's Hospital in Birmingham and, at the age of twenty-six, entered Guy's Hospital to study medicine. Although he completed his academic training, Burdett did not finish the practical course required to qualify as a physician. It is thought that he may have given up medicine because he suffered from chronic renal colic. In 1875, while still a student at Guy's, he became director of the Seaman's Hospital at Greenwich and a few years later left the health care field to take a position at London's Stock Exchange, from which he retired in 1897 because of poor health. Burdett was a staunch supporter of nursing and founded the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses in 1887. He helped establish King Edward's Hospital Fund for London and also owned and edited The hospital and Nursing mirror for a number of years. His most important work was Hospitals and asylums of the world (London, 1891-1893) which deals with the history, administration, and planning of hospitals. The first edition of the present work was written when Burdett was still managing the Seaman's Hospital in Greenwich and was prepared to assist those involved in the management and administration of small village hospitals of under fifty beds. This second edition was greatly enlarged and completely revised to include model plans, a directory of hospitals, financial and budgetary information, statistics on mortality and surgical operations, and a chapter on small hospitals in America which the author felt would become quite popular. The frontispiece depicts Albert Napper (1815-1894) who founded cottage hospitals in 1859.