A Century of Service - Eoin O'Brien

Introduction
It is some twenty years since I last wrote on medical history and my decision to depart the subject
was based on the belief that I had said what I had to say and that there was little to be gained by
my pursuing the subject further. Why then I have asked myself repeatedly over the last year did
I reverse this decision to write a history of a small hospital that would have little if any appeal
outside of the small readership of those who had been associated with the Hospital? Perhaps,
first and foremost I felt dutybound to write about an institution that had been so much a part
of my life. I had not only worked in the Hospital, as had my mother and father before me, but
much of my childhood had been spent there in one form or another. It was as Brian O’Doherty
has so aptly put it “an act of filial piety”. But I think there is more, much more, to it than just
that. Had the City of Dublin Skin and Cancer Hospital closed, been sold and the monies
dispensed to charity in whatever way seemed appropriate I would certainly not have written
this history. It owes its existence to the fact that I see the Hospital on Hume Street as being
merely a developmental step in a greater future, a future that has seen the establishement of the
Charles Institute on the campus of University College Dublin, the Charles Clinic at St. Vincent’s
University Hospital and the Irish Skin Foundation with the mission of bringing science to
society. It is this example of achievement that motivated me to record what may be just the first
of many chapters in a history of endeavour that had its origins in the voluntary hospital
movement in Ireland that dates from the early eighteenth century. A Century of Service is not a
literary work, nor is it a work of historiography; rather it is a statement of endeavour, an account
of a struggle against the odds – a story illustrating that success is a matter of simply having the
courage to dare to fail.
A Century of Service is a tribute, therefore, to those of the past who sacrificed so much for a
better future for the many; it is also a tribute to those of the present who had a vision for the
future.
xv
Eoin O’Brien
Clifton Terrace,
Monkstown,
Co. Dublin
6th June 2011