Atkinson Morley Hospital (AMH) was located at Copse Hill near

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...

, South-West London, England from 1869 until 2003. Initially a

convalescent hospital Convalescence is the gradual recovery of health and strength after illness or injury. It refers to the later stage of an infectious disease or illness when the patient recovers and returns to previous health, but may continue to be a source of ...

, it became one of the most advanced brain surgery centres in the world, and was involved in the development of the

CT scanner A computed tomography scan (CT scan; formerly called computed axial tomography scan or CAT scan) is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers ...

. Following its closure, neuroscience services were relocated to the new Atkinson Morley Wing of

St George's Hospital St George's Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Tooting, London. Founded in 1733, it is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals and one of the largest hospitals in Europe. It is run by the St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundatio ...

, Tooting.

History

The hospital was opened in 1869 following a donation of £100,000 by Atkinson Morley, a wealthy hotelier and landowner, to

"for receiving, maintaining, and generally assisting convalescent poor patients". Morley had been a medical student at St George's Hospital circa 1800 when it was located at Hyde Park Corner. of land from the Duke of Wellington's old estate in

was bought and a building was constructed in the Second Empire style. It opened on 14 July 1869. The hospital remained a convalescent home until 1939. During the Second World War, when the Bolingbroke and St. George's acted as emergency hospitals for war casualties, the Neurosurgery Unit was established at the AMH by the neurosurgeon Sir

Wylie McKissock Sir Wylie McKissock, OBE (27 October 1906 – 3 May 1994) was a British neurosurgeon. He set up the neurosurgical unit at the Atkinson Morley Hospital, was Britain's most prolific leucotomist ( lobotomist), and president of the Society of Br ...

. As the Regional Neurosciences Unit for South West London, the hospital even had its own helicopter landing facility. Next door was the

Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre The Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre, also better known simply as The Wolfson, was a specialist neurorehabilitation centre based in Wimbledon, south west London. The services provided at the centre are now provided at St George's Hospital in Toot ...

. The hospital remained open until 2003 when neurology services were relocated to a purpose-built wing of the main St George's Hospital site, which had by then moved to Tooting. The Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre was closed in 2012 after providing a rehabilitation service to patients of the new Atkinson Morley's Wing at St. George's Hospital and throughout South West London. The building and nearby grounds were converted into apartments and renamed Wimbledon Hill Park.

Development of the CT scanner

In 1967 an electronics engineer from EMI, Godfrey Hounsfield, visited consultant radiologist Jamie Ambrose to discuss a new method of using X-rays to image the brain. Although Hounsfield had been dismissed as a crank by a neuroradiologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Ambrose and other staff thought the proposal was interesting. Ambrose gave him a bottled brain tumour sample to see if he could make good on his claim that "I can do better" than their state-of-the-art X-ray and ultrasound images. When Hounsfield returned five weeks later with a detailed image of the tumour, Ambrose was convinced and he encouraged the Department of Health to fund the building of a prototype scanner. Hospital staff were sworn to secrecy while the first tomographic scanner to produce

computed tomographic A computed tomography scan (CT scan; formerly called computed axial tomography scan or CAT scan) is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers ...

images of a live patient's brain was constructed and tested. On 1 October 1971 the first patient was scanned and the data sent off for analysis. The resulting images were examined by the hospital's neuroradiologists, neurologists and neurosurgeons who immediately appreciated their value. There was international media interest and hundreds of clinicians visited the hospital to see the new scanner. Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with the physicist

Allan M. Cormack Allan MacLeod Cormack (February 23, 1924 – May 7, 1998) was a South African American physicist who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (along with Godfrey Hounsfield) for his work on X-ray computed tomography (CT). Early life a ...

"for the development of computer assisted tomography".

References and sources

;References ;Sources * *Milward, Richard. (1989) ''Historic Wimbledon: Caesar's Camp to Centre Court''. Wimbledon: Fielder's.

External links

Photos of Atkinson Morley's Convalescent Home and Hospital
{{Authority control Defunct hospitals in London NHS hospitals in London History of the London Borough of Merton Hospital buildings completed in 1869 Hospitals established in 1869 1869 establishments in England Hospitals disestablished in 2003 2003 disestablishments in England