This is exactly right.

50 years ago, at the time of the Great Smog of December 1952, I was resident medical officer at what was in those days one of London's teaching hospitals, the Middlesex Hospital.

As we now know, but did not at the time, the borough of

Westminster in which we were situated was the part of London where the fog was most dense. As for my

personal recollection of the smog itself, at its worse, it had the effect of completely disorientating

me in a part of London I knew well, so that I lost my way on a minor

errand from the Middlesex Hospital to Oxford Street 400 yards away. To get my bearings and to

discover where I was, I had to creep on the pavement along the walls of the buildings to the

next corner to read the name of the street.

I do not recall any smell, but I do remember an eerie silence as there was little or no traffic.

Visibility was less than three meters, and it was bitterly cold.

Somehow, although I find this difficult to understand, sufficient ambulances got to us to deliver

patients to take up every available bed. The fog itself swirled into the wards and seemed to

consist principally of smuts so that the wash basins and baths turned darker and darker gray,

until it was possible literally to write one's name

on them, which I actually did. Within a day or two, I had to telephone the senior surgeon to ask

leave to cancel all admissions from the waiting lists until further notice. As I remember the patients

themselves, the clinical picture I have in my mind's eye is of middle-aged

and elderly people, principally men, gasping for breath, with remarkably little in the way of

rails or ronk-eye to hear in their chests. Within a few days, patients with acute respiratory

distress spilled over into all wards, regardless of the specialty or gender.

They were in the surgical wards, and even in the obstetric wards, and as the majority were men,

...