Dame Cicely Saunders changed the way society looked after people dying with terminal illness. In part two of our feature series on St Christopher’s Hospice, DAVID MILLS remembers the founder of the modern hospice movement.
DAVID Tasma was a Polish Jew who had fled the Nazis and arrived in London in the 1940s.
When a shy and young almoner called Cicely Saunders met him, he had lost all his family in the Holocaust and was dying of cancer in his hospital bed.
Dr Mary Baines, who trained and worked with Dame Cicely, said: “Here was a young man with nobody to talk to and feeling like he may well never have been born.
“Dame Cicely was the only person who visited him.
“It was with David she drew close to someone approaching the end of their life and which gave her an insight into it.
“She felt a cause to dedicate her life to.
“She realised his and many people's needs were not being met in hospital or the home.”
Before St Christopher’s was founded in Lawrie Park, Sydenham in 1967, doctors felt there wasn’t much which could be done for a dying person.
Cancer pain was badly controlled with only limited amounts of morphine being used due to fear of causing addiction in the patient.
Dr Baines, 77, said: “She had the idea that rather than give an injection when pain was unbearable, to give painkilling drugs by the mouth and to give them regularly so you gave the next one before the first one had worn off.
“This was one of the great hospice principles. You don't wait for the pain, you anticipate it. This was revolutionary.”
She added: “Most people believed morphine and heroin were not effective by the mouth and that you had to give twice the dosage.
“There was an enormous fear of addiction and it's now been shown when you give painkilling drugs by the mouth for cancer pain, people don’t become addicted.”
Yet it wasn’t just physical pain which Dame Cicely identified as important, but the spiritual and emotional impact terminal illness had on patients and their families.
Dame Cicely trained as a nurse and medical social worker, but if she was to change the way society cared for the dying, she had to become a doctor.
On his deathbed, David Tasma told Dame Cicely he wanted her to do something not for him but for the Davids of the future.
When he died in 1948 he left her all the money he had - £500 - with the words, “I will be a window in your home” which today is inscribed on a window sill at St Christopher’s.
Dr Baines, who studied medicine with Dame Cicely in the 1950s, joined the hospice as a senior doctor in 1968 but wasn’t keen at first, seeing it as “professional suicide”.
She said: “The opening of the hospice was a step of faith. Medically it was enormously exciting. It was exploring a new branch of medicine, not only control of pain in a revolutionary way but all the other symptoms.”
Since St Christopher’s opened, hospice care has spread across the world, with more than 8,000 hospices and palliative care services in 115 countries.
Dr Baines said: “Our duty was to look after patients on the ward and then patients who were at home.
“But behind that it was our duty to change the whole view of dying and we did that from the beginning by constantly welcoming visitors.
“I think people round here should not just appreciate St Christopher’s as a very good local hospice but something which has changed the world, and will hopefully continue to do so.”
DAME CICELY SAUNDERS
1918 - Born on June 22 in Barnet, Hertfordshire
1932-37 - Attends Roedean School in Brighton
1938-39 - Sets out to study politics, philosophy and economics at St Anne's College, Oxford University but leaves to go into nursing
1940-44 - Trains as a nurse at St Thomas's Hospital, London but never practises due to her back problems
1947 - Qualifies as a medical social worker
1948 - Meets David Tasma while working as an almoner
1951-57 - Trains as a doctor at St Thomas's (where she meets Dr Mary Baines)
1958-65 - Works at St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney
1967 - St Christopher's opened by Princess Alexandra, who still visits every year
1980 - Made a Dame of the British Empire and marries artist Professor Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, who died in 1995
1989 - Awarded the Order of Merit 2001 - St Christopher’s receives the Conrad N Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest humanitarian award of one million dollars for the work started by Dame Cicely
2005 - Dies of breast cancer at the hospice on July 14, aged 87
Buy Dame Cicely’s biography by Shirley Boulay and Marianne Rankin for £12.99 from the hospice book shop. Call 020 8768 4660 for more information.
ST CHRISTOPHER’S FACTFILE
St Christopher’s provides in-patient care for more than 2,000 people every year.
On any one day the hospice looks after around 800 people in their own homes.
Multi-professional staff include nurses, doctors, social and welfare workers, occupational therapists, spiritual care workers, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, a dietician, speech therapist and pharmacist.
Care to patients is completely free, but this year the hospice needs to raise £9 million to run its services.
To find out more or to make a donation call 020 8768 4500 or visit stchristophers.org.uk
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