In this
month’s blog we will be hearing from two of our volunteers who have been cataloguing
and part transcribing our
Western General Hospital oral histories as part of
the hospitals 150th anniversary!
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| Western General Hospital, Main Entrance and Driveway, LHSA photographic collection |
First let’s
hear from Mila who discusses working with oral histories and what she enjoyed
most about the experience…
My name is
Mila Daskalova, and I am a former student of the University of Edinburgh. I
graduated from my MSc in Book History and Material Culture in 2017, and
currently I am doing a PhD at the University of Strathclyde, exploring the
history of periodicals published by patients in nineteenth-century mental
institutions. I’ve been volunteering at the LHSA since September this year.
As a
student, I’ve worked with various historical sources. I’ve deciphered
impossible handwriting and marginal notes in dusty books, frantically opened
tab after tab of digitised documents in my Internet browser and sifted through
thick volumes of archival records in search of a single familiar name. I’d
dealt little with oral histories because most of the people whose stories I’ve
been interested in had lived and died before the invention of sound recording
devices. Helping with the archiving of the recordings held at the LHSA has been
a fascinating experience.
The first
oral history I worked with was an interview with Dr Wilma Jack whose experience
at the NHS Cancer Services and the Edinburgh Breast Unit make her a
particularly valuable source of information about the history of the Western
General Hospital and the development of cancer treatment in Edinburgh and
Scotland. Prior to the project, I had little knowledge of the institution and
its role in the history of cancer services. In the process of cataloguing the
interview, I learned a lot, but this first formal encounter with oral histories
was much more than another lesson in history.
There is
something about oral history that is often missing in written historical
narratives: oral histories are emphatically personal. Even when the speaker
tries to speak generally, the listener is always aware that the information is
rooted in personal experience. I believe that is what makes oral histories
particularly powerful and interesting. When historians write history, they
often try to detach themselves from the events they describe, even if they
happened in their lifetime. Oral histories demand speakers to position themselves
in the events, in history.
The most
interesting moments of Wilma’s interview are those where she offers her personal
reflections on issues such as when she talks about her ways of dealing with the
frequent encounters with pain, fear and loss in the cancer services. Listening
to her talk about her experience and views makes me curious about all the
people who have passed through that place over the 150 years since its
establishment in 1868. What would they have to say about witnessing or
experiencing illness or the building where they worked or went with the hope of
recovery? It’s amazing to think about the possibility of someone listening to
Wilma’s voice 150 years from now.
Perhaps my
favourite bit is her reflection on her patient notes. Throughout her career she
developed a system of keeping track of patients’ medical histories by writing
down any relevant information on small reference cards. She says that, despite
the computerisation of medical practice in the past years, she still relies on
her own handwritten notes. As someone who is also reluctant to let go of
old-school note-taking, I could relate to her preference for paper over the
screen.
Next is
Ellen who was interested to discover the history that links the Western General
and Poland…
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| llustration of the Paderewski Hospital, Edinburgh, 1940s (GD28/8/1/1) |
Cataloguing and transcribing
the oral histories of doctors and nurses who have worked at the Western General
Hospital has been an exciting project. As an Edinburgh native, the Western has
been my local hospital since I was a child and listening to the anecdotes of
the staff who worked there has made me realise how little I knew about the
hospital and the work conducted there. In particular, I was interested in
hearing about the work of Polish doctors during WW2 in the Paderewski hospital.
I had not realised there was such strong links between Poland and the Edinburgh
University Medical School, or indeed the Western General. There was an entire
Polish school of medicine established in 1941 at Edinburgh University, which
taught over 336 students out of the Paderewski wing at the Western General.
Although the school closed in 1949, its legacy will continue to be discussed
and re-discovered (as I did) throughout the future.
