London Homeopathic Hospital

Alongside Cantebury Cathedral, this stands as a national apex of, what can in the most technical of terms be called, mumbo jumbo. Visitors can marvel as tax money paid by you and me (well… not me, I’ve literally be evading tax since the day I was born) is flushed away on mumbo jumbo medicines and mumbo jumbo doctors. Future historians will also marvel at the quaint medical fantasies of middle class Sunday-​Times reading (and believing) Londoners, just as today’s historians look back on practices like leeches and trepaning. Incidentally, these two practices would almost certainly become available at the RLHH (or ‘RLMBH’ for short) if someone were to write a Times article claiming they solve such concerning ailments as ‘waitrose has sold out of marmalade’ and ‘I don’t know which curtains to put up in my landrover’.
It’s reassuring that the RLMBH still offers ‘conventional care’ — actual medical treatment — as the other hospitals under the umbrella of University College London Hospitals (not actually part of UCL but an NHS foundation trust) are first-​class teaching institutions. However they ‘compliment’ this ‘conventional care’ with sheer quackery ‘where there is evidence of the effectiveness of complementary therapies’. Well sorry chaps, there’s no evidence.
I remember thrashing out this issue over breakfast while staying in Chengdu once. My opponent was a girl who was trying to pass off some vaguely distilled water as a cure for my friend’s hangover. She had apparently wasted four years of precious life to ‘study’ mumbo jumbo and yet could not provide any basis for an argument. She simply repeated «it upsets me when you say that» each time I demanded factual evidence. I must admit, I did feel sorry for her and so offered her a Neurofen tablet, which she angrily declined.
Unfortunately… someone… somewhere… at some time… felt sorry for someone in London… and gave them a whole hospital where everyone can go and bury their heads in the sand at the taxpayer’s expense.

This is a unique hospital that stands proud on the corner of Queens Sq and Great Ormond St and has served the general public with alternative medicine and treatment for a very long time. I actually worked here in the pharmacy for four years and it was a wonderful and interesting experience. It specialises in Allergy Environmental and Nutritional Medicine. Autogenics Training, a Children’s Clinic and a Complementary Cancer Care Programme to name a few specialist areas. The pharmacy made up most of the concoctions and I have memories of making up lotions and potions prescribed by the doctors. We made up a lot of creams and ointments for skin problems. All the doctors here are qualified in Allopathic and well as Homeopathic medicine and the service is on the NHS which is fantastic.