Radcliffe Infirmary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Location
Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust
Place	Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, (UK)
Organisation
Care System	Public NHS
Hospital Type	Specialist
Affiliated University	University of Oxford
Services
Emergency Dept.	n/a
Beds	275
Speciality	Oxford Eye Hospital
History
Founded	1770
Closed	2007
Links
Website	Homepage
See also	Hospitals in England

The Radcliffe Infirmary was a hospital in central Oxford, England, located at the southern end of Woodstock Road on the western side, backing onto Walton Street. The Radcliffe Infirmary, named after physician John Radcliffe, opened in 1770 and was Oxford's first hospital, and closed on 27 January 2007.

In 1758, the initial proposals to build a hospital in Oxford were put forward at a meeting of the Radcliffe Trustees, who were administering John Radcliffe's estate. £4000 was made available for the new hospital, which was constructed on land given by Thomas Rowney, the Member of Parliament for Oxford.

A number of pioneering moments in medical history occurred at the hospital. penicillin was first tested on patients on 27 January 1941. The first Utah Array (later known as the BrainGate) implantation in a human (Kevin Warwick) took place on 14 March 2002.

The site was the location of the Oxford Eye Hospital.

The Infirmary was acquired by the University of Oxford in 2003 and closed for medical use in 2007 with services being transferred to purpose built buildings at the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals in nearby Headington. The site has been earmarked for expansion of the humanities and mathematics departments in the University of Oxford.

The Woodstock Road entrance of the hospital was frequently seen in the ITV television series Inspector Morse.