The Institute of Naval Medicine is the main research centre and training facility of the Royal Navy Medical Service. The Institute was established in Alverstoke, Gosport, in 1969. The Institute today offers 'specialist medical training, guidance and support from service entry to resettlement', and provides 'extensive research, laboratory and clinical facilities' for use across the armed services.
History
Royal Naval Medical School First established at Royal Naval College, Greenwich in 1912, the Royal Naval Medical School provided induction training for new-entry medical officers, and promotion training for the rank of Fleet Surgeon (later Surgeon Lieutenant Commander). The initial course provided prospective naval surgeons with the skills to function as a sole practitioner at sea; subjects taught included naval hygiene, dentistry, radiography, anaesthetics and tropical medicine. It was from the start a research-focused institution, which in its early decades played a key role in the production of vaccines and sera. Clinical training took place initially at the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital, then (after the First World War) at the London Hospital; courses prior to the Second World War were validated by the University of London. In the early 1930s induction training moved to Haslar, but other teaching and research work continued to be based at Greenwich; by that time the RMNS was engaged in 'a very large amount of highly technical work of the greatest importance to the health of the Navy', including research, analytics, pathological examinations, tropical disease investigations and vaccine making. The Royal Naval Medical School was removed from Greenwich to Clevedon at the start of World War II, where it remained until 1948. During the war its work continued: in the back garden of a house on Elton Road, Clevedon, in 1942 the RNMS constructed the world's first fully functional factory for the mass production of penicillin. In 1948 the Royal Naval Medical School was relocated to Monckton House, Alverstoke. The [[Royal Naval Physiological]Laboratory]] had been established here in 1942, a joint project of the RN Scientific Service and the RN Medical Service. In the 1960s short courses were offered in atomic, underwater and tropical medicine. At the same time, the RNMS began to undertake increasingly specialised medical research in support of the Polaris submarine-launched nuclear weapons programme. Specialised research, training and radiological protection facilities were built in the grounds of Monckton House, and in 1969 the establishment was renamed the Institute of Naval Medicine.
Institute of Naval Medicine
At a safety conference on Saturday 25 March 1972 at the University of Birmingham, organised by the National Council of British Mountaineering, with around five hundred climbing experts present, Surgeon Commander Duncan Walters (August 1927 - August 2021) showed a film entitled Give Him Air, about a swimmer in Malta that was accidentally speared in the lung by a harpoon gun. The film showed the gruesome after-effects of the harpoon incident, which caused eight conference attendees to faint, and had to be carried outside. The film was on the subjects of mountaineering injuries, and expedition medicine. The conference chairman was Sir Jack Longland. It was recommended that walkers on mountains in North Wales were guided by someone with the Mountain Leadership Certificate. In 1970, 43% of those injured on mountains in North Wales were aged 15 to 20. In November 1973 a £200,000 environmental medical centre opened, which simulated life inside a submarine. From 12 November 1973, four sailors (medical ratings) were shut inside this for thirty days, to test atmospheric pollution. J and P Engineering Reading Ltd developed a photo-sensitive radiation detector for the institute, later sold to the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) in Oxfordshire and for CERN. At a conference in Aberdeen in September 1988, Surgeon Captain Ramsay Pearson, head of undersea medicine, said that recreational diving in the UK had too many accidents, due to decompression computers, which he claimed did not have built-in safety factors. The National Hyperbaric Centre in Aberdeen (built by the government in 1987) agreed with him. In August 2000 the site sent four doctors and two staff to the Kursk submarine disaster in a team of twenty-seven from the UK. As of 2005 the Institute's mission statement was 'to improve the operational capability of the Royal Navy by promoting good health and safety and maximising the effectiveness of personnel'. Its five 'principal business areas' were:
Scientific advice on maritime and military health and safety Operationally deployable specialist medical and scientific staff (principally focusing on diving, submarine and radiation medicine) Specialist training Research and equipment testing Corporate services (including medico-legal advice, medical resettlement, libraries and biostatistics).
Sports and survival medicine The Channel 5 documentary Survivor featured the institute, and surviving cold temperatures on the Cascade Range, on Wednesday 28 January 1998. Sir Ranulph Fiennes visited on Monday 11 October 1999, when he was put in an immersion tank. The British Olympic coxless four men's rowing team had medical tests, with a vitalograph for lung function in 2008, later winning the gold medal in August 2012.
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