A Century of Service - Eoin O'Brien

Peter O’Flanagan, Chairman of the Board of the City of
Dublin Skin and Cancer Hospital
On behalf of the Board of the Charity (the City of Dublin Skin and
Cancer Hospital) it gives me great pleasure to pay tribute to a hospital,
which has served the people of Dublin for just over a century.
If this book had merely recorded the history of the Hospital up to its
closure in October 2006 it would have been worth the writing but the
sale of the Hospital buildings on Hume Street for over €30 million,
the successful and potentially hazardous modification of the 1916
Charter to permit the Hospital Board to not only protect its legacy, but to direct its attention to
funding research into skin disease, opened broader vistas that have allowed the recording of a
new life, a second coming, for the Hospital under the aegis of the newly established Chartergoverned
charity.
But none of this would have happened were it not for the foundation of the Hospital without
which there would have been no tale to tell. We were very fortunate to have the services of
Professor Eoin O’Brien to research and write this book. Quite simply Eoin is steeped in the
history of the City of Dublin Skin and Cancer Hospital; his father Dr. Gerard T. O’Brien worked
in the Hospital as visiting physician for over 30 years and Eoin succeeded his father in this
capacity. Couple this intimate knowledge of an institution with Eoin’s reputation as an author
and we have a book that is eminently readable as well as being highly informative. Not alone
does A Century of Service tell the history of the Hospital but it relates the story in the context of
time and place; a hospital in the centre of Georgian Dublin, struggling often in turbulent times,
but destined to survive because of the determination of those who served it in the true voluntary
spirit – great characters of their time.
However, above all A Century of Service is a testament to the vision of Andrew Charles and those
founding figures, both medical and lay, who served either on the Board or at the bedside in the
true voluntary spirit mostly without fee or reward to sustain an ethos in which they believed.
My hope is that this book will also provide inspiration to future researchers, to nurses, doctors
and scientists who will work in the years ahead in the Charles Institute and the hospitals
specialising in skin disease to which the benefits of scientific research will be brought in the true
spirit of translational medicine.
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