Contents of Medical box

Description

While talking to local traders about a planed event last year, Porthcawl Museum received from Boots the Chemist in John St Porthcawl an interesting artefact which is now on loan to the museum. In 2010 a doctor's medical kit was given to the store following a house clearance. After some research the kit has been identified as belonging to Major Stanley Alwyn Smith. Who possibly used the kit judging by the content while serving on the front line during the Great War This extract is his obituary dated 1935 published by the BMA STANLEY ALWYN SMITH, D.S.O. O.B.E. MI.D., M.CiI., F.R.C.S.ED. Consulting Surgeon, Ministry of Pensions, Wales Region; formerly Orthopedic Surgeon in Chief, Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital Stanley Alwyn Smith was the son of Lieut.-Colonel T. F. Smith of Leek, Staffordshire, in 1884 He entered Edinburgh University as a medical student soon after graduating M.B., Ch.B. in 1905 he became house-surgeon, and then personal assistant, to Sir Robert Jones in Liverpool, in collaboration with whom he laid the foundations of that knowledge which made him one of the world's leading authorities on disorders of the knee-joint and their surgical treatment. He proceeded M.D. in 1908, and in 1911 obtained the M.Ch. degree and he diploma of F.R.C.S.Ed. Alwyn Smith went to Canada by invitation in 1912, and practised as a consulting orthopedic surgeon to the Winnipeg General Hospital and the Children's Hospital. Immediately on the outbreak of the great war, he was mobilized with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and served in France all through 1915. He was awarded the D.S.O. at Festubert in recognition of his devotion to his work, when his power of intense concentration, combined He was twice mentioned in dispatches. He returned to England in 1916 to take charge of all Canadian orthopedic cases, and was appointed surgeon in-Chief of the Granville Special Hospital at Ramsgate. This was the first orthopedic hospital started in England during the war, and was a model of efficiency and organization. In 1917, by special request, he was transferred to the British Army, and was placed in charge of the Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital at Whitchurch, (Whitchurch Hospital) Cardiff, as orthopedic surgeon-in-chief. After the war Alwyn Smith became consulting surgeon to the Ministry of Pensions and surgeon-in-chief to the Prince of Wales Limbless Hospital, which later became the orthopedic hospital for Wales. His son Peter was also a Doctor and lived at Orchard Cottage Newton Porthcawl during which time he was appointed Principal Medical officer at the Welsh office.