Budleigh Past and Present

Budleigh Hospital Hub project development manager Rob Jones with a jar used for storing live leeches by 19th century doctors. Barts Hospital in London used 100,000 leeches annually to bleed patients A Victorian surgeon’s set of instruments, cupping therapy equipment and  a leech jar are among the artefacts that could be on view for visitors to Budleigh Salterton’s new Health and Wellbeing Hospital Hub. But patients can rest assured that the items will remain in glass cabinets as medical curiosities. If, like me, you tend to visit doctors’ surgeries and hospitals more often than you would like, the chances are you’ll wonder how our various ailments were treated in the past.  And how they’ll be dealt with in the years ahead. CT scans, hip replacements, robotic surgery and laser eye treatment would all seem miraculous to patients and doctors of just a century ago. As for genetic engineering, we can only dream of ho...

                                      Yes, I expect you’re wondering what that photo of Bob Monkhouse is doing there with its scary message. Well, if you’ve been curious enough to read about the crazy man who spends so much time blogging away about the latest news from Budleigh’s museum you’ll know that I am, I hope, a cancer survivor. And digging deeper - perhaps by using the search box on the blog and typing in the word prostate - you’ll find that I, like many of my age, went through the prostatectomy ordeal just over three years ago.   That followed a diagnosis of cancer two years previously. You’ll also have noted, perhaps that not all of this blog is devoted to Fairlynch Museum or even Budleigh Salterton, fascinating though our little town is. Yes, it’s a grim business, cancer. Like any life-threatening illness. But the doct...

    Some Budleigh residents may remember from many years ago their visits to the old Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital at its Southernhay site in the city centre. Not that they would remember seeing horses and carriages of course. The above engraving by Exeter artist and photographer Owen Angel (c.1821-1909) dates from 1849 and not even longevity-celebrated Budleigh can boast of having citizens from that time. An inscription below the engraving tells us that the work was printed by Mr Angel, on the occasion of the Fancy Bazaar in aid of the Funds of the Devon & Exeter Hospital , held on Northernhay, Exeter , on 31 July and 1 August 1849. The ‘Royal’ was added only following the visit by the Duke and Duchess of York in 1899. Mr Angel’s work appears here because it’s one of the many interesting items on loan from the Devon and Exeter Medical Society which will be on show at Fairlynch’s forthcoming exhibition ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges.’   ...