Saint Luke's Hospital : foundation and progress 1930-1990

Abstract

The celebration commemorating the sixty years of life of the only general hospital in Malta is an appropriate occasion to place its record of service to our community for examination and judgement. As practitioners of the healing art and science we deal with persons suffering from bodily illness and from distressing mental states arising from ignorance of the nature of disease, from misguided life-styles and from adverse social and environmental conditions. The first line of defence against the onslaught of disease is the family doctor but when the origin of illness is obscure or the treatment required is sophisticated, the avenue to a clear pathological understanding and adequate treatment of the patient leads inevitably to that house of healing dominating the heights of Gwardamanga. There, under the aegis of the benevolent evangelist Luke, the weary and the anxious resort to seek the cure for physical and mental illness in an atmosphere of welcome, solace and comfort. How St Luke's Hospital has endeavoured to perform this task is surveyed in the pages that follow - from the time of the laying of its foundation stone in 1930, through the changes wrought by the vicissitudes of sixty years of growth, to the present day. Though faced by repeated hitches of various kinds in its forward march, the hospital succeeded in forging ahead in its incessant and earnest efforts to restore us to that state of vigour, efficiency and serenity which we associate with the modern definition of health and, when complete restoration was not always possible, to provide us with the maximum substitution for inevitable anatomical and functional losses.