Charing Cross Hospital Medical School

Study-2

                                    

The origins of the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School can be found at a meeting of gentlemen at the home of Dr Benjamin Golding to discuss setting up a charitable institution to be known as the West London Infirmary. This was to be a hospital with training facilities, to supply the want of a University, so far as medical education is concerned. Golding drew up a medical education plan in 1822.

The hospital opened in 1823 in Villiers Street and in 1827 was named Charing Cross Hospital. New Medical School facilities opened in Agar Street in 1834 with 22 students, and again in Chandos Place in 1881. The School was enlarged in 1894, adding physical, biological and pathological laboratories and the curriculum was lengthened from 4 to 5 years.

19th Century alumni from the School include the explorer David Livingstone who was a student there between1839-1840. T.H. Huxley took his medical training at the School, publishing his first paper in 1845 whilst a studentOn a hitherto undescribed structure in the human hair sheath’. It describes the inner layer of the root sheath of the hair follicle since known as Huxley's layer.