Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry

Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Established	1123 (St Bartholomew's Hospital) 1785 (London Hospital Medical College) 1843 (Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital) 1989 (Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the London Hospital Medical College merge) 1995 (Medical Colleges join Queen Mary and Westfield College)
President	The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London
Warden	Professor Richard Trembath
Students	2,300 (total)
Location	London, United Kingdom
Colours
Affiliations	Queen Mary, University of London
Website	http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk

Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry is the medical school of Queen Mary, University of London.^[1] The school was formed in 1995 by the merger of the London Hospital Medical College (the oldest medical school in England and Wales, founded in 1785), the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital (the oldest remaining hospital in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1123, with medical teaching beginning from that date) and Queen Mary and Westfield College.

The school exists on two main sites, having a presence at the site of both of the former colleges at and near their respective hospitals, St Bartholomew's Hospital (in Smithfield, City of London and nearby in Charterhouse Square), and the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets with an additional site at Queen Mary's main (Mile End) campus.^[2] A new building (Blizard Building), named after the founder of The London Hospital Medical College, Sir William Blizard, was recently completed at the Royal London site, and houses research laboratories and is the main site for medical undergraduate teaching.

In the 2008 government Research Assessment Exercise, the school was ranked first for the quality of its medical research in London and fourth overall nationally; the dental school was ranked joint first. As of 2008 the school accepted 277 British medical students per annum and an additional 17 from overseas, making it one of the largest medical schools in the United Kingdom.^[3] The medical school is a constituent college of the federal University of London, and a member of the United Hospitals.

History

Part of the Charterhouse Square site

St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry was formed in 1995 by a merger of St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College with Queen Mary and Westfield College, now known as Queen Mary, University of London.

The Medical College at the Royal London Hospital, England's first official medical school, opened in 1785, pioneering a new kind of medical education, with an emphasis on theoretical and clinical teaching. A purpose-built lecture theatre was constructed at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1791 and in 1822 the Governors approved the provision of medical education within the hospital. Later a residential college was established, which moved to premises at Charterhouse Square in the 1930s. At the Royal London, larger premises, still in use by the medical school, were built in Turner Street in 1854. In 1900 both medical colleges became constituent colleges of the University of London in the Faculty of Medicine.

The Dental School opened at the London in 1911, acquiring the new Dental Institute and expanding student numbers during the 1960s. Dental education developed during the 1970s, increasing collaboration between dentists and other professionals.

Between the Wars, students at the Royal London requiring a prerequisite MB (in biology, chemistry and physics) attended Queen Mary College for a year, before proceeding to a second MB at the London. Women students were first admitted to both colleges following World War II.

A close association between the two medical colleges was developed following the Royal Commission on Medical Education in 1968, and new links with the then Queen Mary College were established at the same time. In 1989 the pre-clinical teaching at the two medical colleges was merged and sited in the Basic Medical Sciences Building at Queen Mary (where it stayed until 2005, when it was moved to the Blizard Building at the Whitechapel campus). In 1992, St. Bartholomew's, the Royal London and the London Chest Hospital joined to form the Barts and The London NHS Trust, with a full merger of the medical colleges with Queen Mary taking place three years later.

On 2 March 2011, it was announced that Professor Richard Trembath would succeed Professor Sir Nicholas Wright as Warden of the School in Summer 2011.^[4]

Research

The school has a distinguished history in the field of research and teaching, and has been at the forefront in the development of a modern dental and medical curriculum. It serves a diverse population in East London and the wider Thames Gateway, with the differing demographics of East London in contrast to other areas of the country providing the school with a unique teaching opportunity, exposing students to situations and scenarios not commonly encountered elsewhere. Consequently, many of the school's research efforts are focussed on conditions that are prevalent or endemic to the local area, for example, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, tuberculosis and other chronic lung diseases, HIV, oral disease, and cancer.

St. Bartholomew's Hospital is a recognised area of excellence in the fields of cardiovascular and cancer research, whereas the Royal London Hospital is London's leading trauma and emergency centre. To continue and sustain this standard of care, planning permission was awarded in March 2005 for a £1 billion redevelopment and expansion of the Royal London. Upon its completion in 2011, the Royal London Hospital will consolidate its position as London’s leading trauma and emergency care centre, will have one of Europe’s largest renal services and the capital’s second biggest paediatric service. St. Bartholomew's Hospital is also currently being refurbished and refitted in order to continue its specialised approach to cardiovascular and cancer care. A further £100 million has been invested in creating leading-edge research facilities at both the Whitechapel and West Smithfield/Charterhouse Square campuses, so that the school can continue attracting world-class researchers and funding.

The school has six research institutes:

• Barts Cancer Institute, which researches cancer and inflammation, cell signalling, experimental cancer medicine, haemato-oncology, molecular oncology and imaging and tumour biology.

• Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, which focuses on surgery, paediatrics, cutaneous, diabetes, gastroenterology, haematology, infectious diseases neuroscience, pathology and health sciences.

• Institute of Dentistry, where research and teaching into adult oral health, oral growth and development, and clinical and diagnostic oral sciences occurs.

• Institute of Health Sciences Education.

• William Harvey Research Institute is a world class research facility focussing on biochemical pharmacology, orthopaedic diseases, endocrinology, genomics, clinical pharmacology and translational medicine and therapeutics.

• Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine researches preventive medicine, epidemiology, mathematics and statistics, psychology and psychiatry.

Research Assessment Exercise 2008

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is one of the few ways in which the academic quality of British medical and dental schools can be compared and ranks research by two principal measures: the proportion of work graded 4* and 3* – world-leading or internationally recognised respectively - and the Grade Point Average (GPA) across the whole profile of the submission.

The results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), published in December 2008, confirmed Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry as one of the leading medical and dental schools in the United Kingdom. For medicine, the school ranked top in the quality of its research in London, and fourth nationally (behind Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh); for dentistry, the school was awarded joint first ranking (along with Manchester).

According to the rankings published in the Times Higher Education, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry was consistently ranked in the top five nationally for the following categories:

• Dentistry was ranked 1st equal with Manchester, based on 3* and 4* outputs, and 2nd overall on Grade Point Average out of 14 dental schools. ^[5]
• In Cancer, Barts and The London was ranked 3rd out of 14 submissions in terms of 3* and 4* outputs and joint 5th in the UK overall. ^[5]
• The Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, returned in Hospital Subjects, was ranked joint 1st with Cambridge and Edinburgh in terms of 3* and 4* outputs and was joint 7th overall out of 28. ^[5]
• The Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, returned in Epidemiology and Public Health, was 2nd out of 21 in terms of 3* and 4* outputs, and 3rd overall. ^[5]
• In Health Services Research, Barts and The London's Institute of Health Sciences Education was ranked 4th overall out of 28. ^[5]
• The William Harvey Research Institute, returned in Preclinical and Human Biological Sciences, was ranked 3rd in terms of 3* and 4* outputs, and 4th overall out of 13. ^[5]

The Complete University Guide gave the medical school an overall ranking of sixth, and the dental school seventh, in the United Kingdom in 2012, citing the institution's strength in research.^{[citation needed]}

Barts and The London Students' Association

Barts and The London Students' Association is the students' union for the medical and dental school, a largely independent arm of Queen Mary Students' Union (QMSU) formed when the student unions of St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School and the London Hospital Clubs Union merged with QMSU at the time their parent bodies merged in 1995. The Students' Association has a very distinct culture from that of QMSU, with its own clubs and societies for most sports and activities, competing in the National Association of Medics' Sports against other schools and universities.

Notable people

Notable former members of staff

• William Baly
• Gustav Victor Rudolf Born
• Edward Frankland - Chemist
• Samuel Gee
• Alexander George Ogston - Biochemist
• William Odling - Helped develop the periodic table
• Peter Kopelman
• Joseph Rotblat - Nobel Prize winner
• John Robert Vane - Nobel Prize winner
• Wendy Savage - Gynaecologist

Notable alumni

• John Abernethy - Surgeon
• Joseph Adams (physician) - Surgeon and pathologist
• Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison - Politician
• George Augustus Auden - Noted professor of public health
• John Badley - Surgeon
• Edward Bancroft - Physician and double agent in the American Revolution
• Gopal Baratham - Author and neurosurgeon
• Gilbert Barling - Former Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham
• Thomas John Barnardo - Philanthropist
• Frederick Batten - Neurologist and paediatrician
• Hannah Billig - Famous wartime doctor
• William Blizard - Surgeon
• George Bodington - Pulmonary specialist
• Robert Bridges - Poet and holder of the honour of poet laureate from 1913
• Henry Edmund Gaskin Boyle - Anaesthetist
• Alfred James Broomhall - Medical missionary
• George Busk - Surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist
• William Carr - Former director of the Royal Australian Navy's Naval Medical Services
• Graham Chapman - Comedian
• William Job Collins - Surgeon and politician
• Albert Ruskin Cook - Medical missionary
• John Desmond Cronin - Politician and surgeon
• Tim Crow - Psychiatrist
• Thomas Blizard Curling - Surgeon
• John Freke - First ophthalmic surgeon
• Archibald Garrod - The first physician first to appreciate the importance of biochemistry in medicine
• Richard Gordon - Screenwriter and novelist
• Major Greenwood - Epidemiologist and statistician
• Sir Wilfred Grenfell, KCMG, - Medical missionary
• Gordon Hamilton-Fairley - Oncologist
• Anthony Hamilton-Smith, 3rd Baron Colwyn - Politician
• William Harvey - First person to describe circulation
• Charles Hill, Baron Hill of Luton - Politician and former chairman of the BBC
• James Hinton (surgeon) - Surgeon and author
• Ebbe Hoff - Founding director of the Virginia Division of Substance Abuse
• Jonathan Hutchinson - Ophthalmologist
• John Hughlings Jackson - Neurologist
• John Hunter (surgeon) - Surgeon and anatomist. The Hunterian Society is named in his honour.
• Donald McIntosh Johnson - Author and politician
• John Langdon-Down - Physician who worked with mentally retarded children (Down's syndrome is named after him)
• William Lawrence - Surgeon, a founder of British ophthalmology
• William Elford Leach - English zoologist and marine biologist
• John Leech - Caricaturist
• William John Little - Surgeon, pioneer of orthopaedic surgery
• Martyn Lloyd-Jones - Evangelical Christian religious leader
• Morell Mackenzie - Pioneer of laryngology
• William Marsden (surgeon) - Surgeon, founder of The Royal Free and Marsden Hospitals
• John Preston Maxwell - Medical missionary
• Robert Morrison - Medical missionary
• Richard Owen - English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist
• James Parkinson - Political activist and first to describe Parkinson's Disease
• Sir James Paget - Surgeon and founder of scientific medical pathology
• Jonathan Pereira - Pharmacologist
• Percivall Pott - English surgeon, founder of orthopaedy
• W. H. R. Rivers - Psychiatrist, psychiatric anthropologist
• William Scovell Savory - Surgeon
• Jay Sean - Musician
• G. Spencer-Brown - Mathematician
• Frederick Howard Taylor - Medical missionary
• Herbert Hudson Taylor - Medical missionary
• Hudson Taylor - Medical missionary
• Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet - Surgeon
• Daniel Hack Tuke - Expert on mental illness
• William Turner (University Principal) - Anatomist and Former principal of Edinburgh University
• William James Erasmus Wilson - Surgeon
• Peter Wingfield - Actor
• Robert Winston - Gynaecologist and politician
• Arthur Wint - Olympic gold medallist

Fictional alumni

• Harold Legg - Doctor in the British soap opera EastEnders from 1985–1997, making guest appearances in 2000 and 2004
• Doctor Watson - Sherlock Holmes's companion and "biographer": not only did the two first meet in the pathology laboratories, but also Watson refers to his time as a "dresser" (the equivalent nowadays of the surgical houseman) at Bart's

See also

• Third oldest university in England debate
• Dental Schools Council

References

1. ^ "About Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry". Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk/about/index.html. Retrieved 19 April 2011. 
2. ^ "Find US". Barts and The London website. Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk/findus/index.html. Retrieved 7 October 2011. 
3. ^ "British Medical School Statistics". Study-medicine.co.uk. http://www.study-medicine.co.uk/index.php?pageid=stats. Retrieved 2008-09-08. 
4. ^ "QMUL appoints new Warden of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry". Qmul.ac.uk. http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/44919.html. Retrieved 2011-03-03. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "RAE 2008 : Publications : 2009 : RAE2008 subject overviews". Rae.ac.uk. http://www.rae.ac.uk/pubs/2009/ov/. Retrieved 2010-04-20. 

External links

• School of Medicine and Dentistry
• Queen Mary, University of London
• Website for "Centre of the Cell"
• Bart's and the London Students' Association, University of London
• Queen Mary Students' Union, University of London
• University of London Union
• Lists of St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School students
• St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School military personnel,1914-1918

Coordinates: 51°30′59″N 0°3′39″W / 51.51639°N 0.06083°W / 51.51639; -0.06083