Erupting into a bout of deja vu - and common sense

Jul 17 2008 By Chris Upton

The sobering side of being a historian is that rarely does one come across anything new under the sun. Indeed, one good reason for never setting up a thinktank of historians – an idea mooted a few months back – is that they would inevitably pour cold water on any new idea.

In comes an excited civil servant or government minister, eyes sparkling with a brand new invention, only to be told that they tried that back in 1885 and the early months of 1886.

And on being asked if the idea worked – after 122 years you could risk re-introducing it as new policy – the historians will sombrely reply that there is not enough evidence to judge.

Take the deep clean as an example.

Here was a headline government initiative to combat hospital infections, which a little while ago seemed to be taking out as many patients as the NHS cured.

A serious scrubbing, down to the cracks in the lino, was offered as a possible way to head off MRSA, C. Difficile and their nasty little companions.

At this point I will take you back to 1862, when the children in Kings Norton workhouse were all going down with what they called a “severe eruptive disease”.

This was a skin infection of some kind, effortlessly passed on from child to child because the children’s wards in the workhouse were overcrowded.

Once a virus gets into an institution, as we know with MRSA, it’s a devil of a job to get rid of it without emptying the building of its patients.

This is probably the best solution, I imagine, but impossible in the 21st Century. At one time the country was full of convalescent homes and hospitals – usually sited by the seaside or up a hill – where recuperating patients could ease themselves back into the real world.

As far as I can see, most such homes have been sold off by cash-strapped hospital trusts or private heath companies, converted into luxury sea-view apartments or left to crumble away.

Back in 1862 the guardians at Kings Norton, after suitably reflective medical advice, adopted the same measures.

First to move the children out, then to subject their accommodation to all the cleansers available on the market.

The wards should be “whitewashed, cleaned and fumigated, all the beds, bedding and clothing washed with scrupulous care, and the most efficient ventilation maintained night and day.”

A good draught, to the Victorians, was the greatest panacea of all, capable of putting disease to flight, bringing the dead back to life and smoothing out wrinkles. If all this did not get rid of the infection, nothing would.

As for the children, they found their lives briefly lifted out of the close confines of the Poor Law and out into the Lickey Hills (or the Bromsgrove Lickey, as it was then called), where the guardians managed to find temporary accommodation at ten shillings a week. The severe eruptive disease began to look like a blessing in disguise.

The whole episode lasted five months. It did not rid the institution or the children of skin disease (which broke out again a year later), but it must have felt like an unexpected holiday at the time, if with itchy side-effects.

Not long after, putting two and two together, the authorities realised that taking the children to the Lickeys once in a while might prevent them catching whatever they caught in the first place. And, subconsciously, we probably still believe that.

* Dr Chris Upton is cleaning his office at Newman University College in Birmingham.