This week, Access Officer Louise has been getting to know LHSA's image collections:
5th July is fast approaching, and as the
National Health Service prepares to turn 70, here at Lothian Health Services
Archive we have been hard at work promoting the big day.
Our exhibition, Dawn
of a New Era, has been on display in the Main Library of the University of
Edinburgh since April 13 and will continue until August 15 with the addition of
two further display cases arriving in late June. The exhibition uses LHSA
collections to chart the journey of the NHS from pre-1948 experiments with
state healthcare through 70 years of innovation, challenges and breakthroughs. The
exhibition showcases a diverse range of objects, and it is definitely the first
exhibition I have seen featuring both a pacemaker and a board game.
 |
| NHS objects on display inside the exhibition |
As well as our preparations, I have been answering enquiries
from others who are collecting images to use in their own promotion of the
anniversary. Image requests have been helpful in allowing me to gain an ever
broadening understanding of the collections held by LHSA and I have already
compiled a long list of favourites.
While searching for images that depicted nurses at work I
came across this wonderful scene from 1960s which shows nurses at Christmas with
geriatric patients on a ward in Bangour Village Hospital.
 |
| Patients and nurses at Christmas, Bangour Village Hospital, c. late 1960s (P/PL44/P/088) |
Another image I enjoyed was a photograph showing a classroom
of nurses being taught in their new teaching department at the Royal Infirmary
of Edinburgh which opened in 1957.
 |
| Nurses' classroom, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, 1957 (P/PL1/S) |
I also conducted a search through our extensive collection
of midwifery and nursing badges from across Scotland. My favourite is from the
North Edinburgh School of Midwifery which has a dolphin arching across the
centre.
 |
| North Edinburgh School of Midwifery badge, late 1970s (O467) |
As well as midwifery and nursing, badges held by LHSA cover
Edinburgh’s hospitals from the early twentieth century through to HIV awareness
campaigns of the late 1980s and ‘90s.
For more images of our historic badges, visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/49439570@N08/sets/72157625849589925
No comments:
Post a Comment