Manchester Eye Hospital

Manchester Eye Hospital is celebrating its 200th year looking after the sight of the people of Manchester. Their web site gives information about the history and development of the Eye Hospital which was started in 1814.

So, what connection is there between the Eye Hospital and George Street Chapel? Apart from the fact that they are almost built at the same time.

Well, one of the members of the chapel, Alice Dronsfield, was treated at the hospital in her old age, before 1886 when she died.

An obituary for Alice Dronsfield (1814-1886), published in the Independent Methodist Magazine and states that she had an operation at Manchester Eye Hospital and that she requested that the operation was carried out without anaesthetic.

About this time her eyes, always weak were attacked by disease, and she went to the Manchester Eye Hospital. With the injunction that chloroform should not be used she consented to an operation. “I committed myself,” she afterwards said, “in prayer to the care of God, asking Him to give me strength, and the doctor skill,” and she felt assurance that all would be well.

To celebrate the bicentenary of the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, Mr Nicholas Jones, Consultant Ophthalmologist, has written its history. The book is entitled "Manchester Royal Eye Hospital 1814-2014: An Inside View". It is hardback, 294 pages and richly illustrated in colour and B&W. Details on the hospitals web site.

Mr Jones has said that she may have been given a local anaesthetic of cocaine to help with pain, but that chloroform at that time was usually given only to young fit people.