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Rotunda Hospital
Health Service Executive - RCSI Hospitals
Rotunda Hospital frontage on Parnell Street
Shown in Dublin
Geography
Location	Parnell Square East, Rotunda, D01 P5W9, Dublin, Ireland
Coordinates	53°21′09″N 6°15′45″W / 53.3526°N 6.2626°W / 53.3526; -6.2626
Organisation
Care system	HSE
Type	Specialist
Affiliated university	Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Dublin City University
Patron	Bartholomew Mosse
Services
Speciality	Maternity hospital
History
Former name(s)	Dublin Lying-In Hospital
Opened	1745; 279 years ago (1745)
Links
Lists	Hospitals in the Republic of Ireland

The Rotunda Hospital (Irish: Ospidéal an Rotunda; legally the Hospital for the Relief of Poor Lying-in Women, Dublin) is a maternity hospital on Parnell Street in Dublin, Ireland, now managed by RCSI Hospitals. The Rotunda entertainment buildings in Parnell Square are no longer part of the hospital complex.

History

The hospital was founded by Bartholomew Mosse, a surgeon and midwife who was appalled at the conditions that pregnant women had to endure, in George's Lane in March 1745. It was granted by royal charter on 2 December 1756 by King George II. Lying-in is an archaic term for childbirth (referring to the month-long bed rest prescribed for postpartum confinement). The venture was very successful and Mosse raised money through concerts, exhibitions and even a lottery to establish larger premises.

The hospital moved to its current premises in 1757, designed by Richard Cassels, where it became known as "The New Lying-In Hospital". The Church of Ireland Chapel was opened in 1762. Open to the public, it provided a healthy income to the hospital annually, Dr. Mosse successfully encouraging wealthy Protestant Dubliners to attend service there.

Records indicate that around 1781, "when the hospital was imperfectly ventilated, every sixth child died within nine days after birth, of convulsive disease; and that after means of thorough ventilation had been adopted, the mortality of infants, within the same, in five succeeding years, was reduced to one in twenty". This issue was not limited to the Lying-In-Hospital. In that era, ventilation improvement was a general issue in patient care, along with other issues of sanitation and hygiene, and the conditions in which surgeons such as Robert Liston in Britain and elsewhere, had to operate. Florence Nightingale famously worked on the design of safe and healthy hospitals.

The first caesarean section in Ireland was undertaken at the hospital in 1889.

By 1993, the hospital was still functioning as a maternity hospital.

Rotunda

The eponymous Rotunda, designed by James Ensor, was completed just in time for a reception hosted by James FitzGerald, Marquess of Kildare in October 1767. The extensive Rotunda Rooms, designed by Richard Johnston and built adjacent to the rotunda, were completed in 1791. By the early 19th century the hospital had become known as the Rotunda Hospital, after its most prominent architectural feature. The Rotunda became a theatre, where the Irish Volunteers' first public meeting was held in 1913, and later housed the Ambassador Cinema. The Rotunda Rooms now house the Gate Theatre.

Architecture

Patrick Wyse Jackson, curator of the Geological Museum in Trinity College, assessed the building in 1993 as part of his book "The Building Stones of Dublin: A Walking Guide" with the following remarks:

"The walls of the current building dating from 1757 are faced with Leinster granite and Kilgobbin granite... The former building was executed in Portland stone and Leinster granite, to which a sculptured frieze of ox heads and other panels were added. These are interesting as they are made of Coade stone, a fashionable artificial stone used widely in the late 1700s." The Rotunda or "round room", and the buildings now occupied by the Gate Theatre were later additions.

Services

The Rotunda Hospital, as both a maternity hospital and also as a training centre (affiliated with Trinity College Dublin) is notable for having provided continuous service to mothers and babies since inception, making it the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. It is estimated that over 300,000 babies have been born there.

Criticism

In 2000 the Rotunda Hospital was one of two Dublin maternity hospitals found to have illegally retained organ tissue from babies without parental consent. The tissue removed in post-mortem examinations was retained for some years. The Rotunda hospital admitted that permission should have been sought for this process to be allowed to take place.

A medical negligence award was approved in 2020 for a young boy who developed cerebral palsy as a result of complications with his delivery at the hospital in 2004.

See also

• General Lying-In Hospital, London

References

1. "Ospidéal an Rotunda". téarma.ie. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
2. "S.I. No. 329/1999 - Freedom of Information Act, 1997 (Prescribed Bodies) Regulations, 1999". electronic Irish Statute Book. First Schedule, No.30. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
3. "Six hospital groups 'most fundamental reform in decades'". Irish Medical Times. 14 May 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
4. Kirkpatrick, p. 7
5. "The Rotunda Charter Booklet" (PDF). Retrieved 6 January 2020.
6. Slemons, J. Morris (1912). "The Prospective Mother: A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy".
7. Kirkpatrick, p. 25
8. ^ "Rotunda Hospital". Architecture Of Dublin. Archiseek.com. Archived from the original on 23 July 2008. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
9. Kirkpatrick, p. 35
10. "Chronological History of the Rotunda Hospital" (PDF). Retrieved 6 January 2020.
11. "History: Heroes: Bartholomew Mosse". www.turtlebunbury.com. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
12. "Bartholomew Mosse and the Rotunda". Newstalk. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
13. Claridge, Capt. R.T. (1843). Hydropathy; or The Cold Water Cure, as practiced by Vincent Priessnitz, at Graefenberg, Silesia, Austria (8th ed.). London: James Madden and Co. p. 37. Retrieved 29 October 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org).
14. ^ Nightingale, Florence (1860). Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not. Boston: William Carter. Retrieved 24 October 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
15. Gordon, Richard (1983). "Disastrous Motherhood: Tales from the Vienna Wards". Great Medical Disasters. London: Hutchinson & Co. pp. 43–46. p.43
16. Holmes, O.W. (March 1842). "On the contagiousness of puerperal fever". New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine. i: 503–30. in Gordon, R. (1983), p.147.
17. "New RTE series delves behind the scenes at world's longest running maternity hospital in Dublin". Irish Post. 13 September 2018. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
18. ^ Wyse Jackson 1993, p. 45.
19. Kirkpatrick, p. 68
20. Kirkpatrick, p. 104
21. Kirkpatrick, p. 198
22. "90 Years of The Gate Theatre | Dublin City Council". www.dublincity.ie. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
23. "Trinity College Campus Maps:-Rotunda". University Of Dublin, Trinity College. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
24. "The Rotunda: Behind the scenes at the world's oldest maternity hospital". Irish Times. 14 September 2018. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
25. "Patient Information Booklet" (PDF). Rotunda Hospital. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
26. "Rotunda and Holles Street kept babies' organ tissue". 29 February 2000.
27. "Boy gets €3m over birth brain injuries". Irish Examiner. 12 February 2016. Retrieved 30 October 2020.

Sources

• Kirkpatrick, T. Percy C. (1913). The Book of the Rotunda Hospital. Adlard & Son, Bartholomew Press.
• Wyse Jackson, Patrick (1993). The Building Stones of Dublin: A Walking Guide. Donnybrook, Dublin: Town House and Country House. ISBN 0-946172-32-3.

External links

• Official website

• 1745 establishments in Ireland
• Teaching hospitals in Dublin (city)
• Teaching hospitals of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
• Teaching hospitals of the University of Dublin, Trinity College
• Rotundas in Europe
• Hospitals established in the 1740s
• Parnell Square
• Physicians of the Rotunda Hospital
• Health Service Executive hospitals
• Richard Cassels buildings
• Maternity hospitals
• Georgian architecture in Dublin (city)