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School Clinics

philbee

birmingham born and bred
does anybody remember the school clinic that was off gosta green i remember going there to have some teeth pulled when i was younger,the gas mask,then waking up and being sent to a room that had a big long crock sink and running water where other kids where rinsing out their mouths talk about rivers of blood! the best part of this excursion though was mom buying me a big piece of honeycomb a sweet that was like a crunchie bar without chocolate yummmmm , the dentist would have had a fit if he had seen me eating it just after removing my teeth!
i also used to have to go there for sunray treatment were i had strip of to my pants and sit around in a circle on chairs with other children with a big lamp in the centre of us that used to heat us up turning once when done to do your back i might add we wore protective glasses to protect our eyes. i seem to remember it being up the side of the old motor sales motorbike showroom or am i mistaken.

phil
 
i remember the sherbourne road school clinic where i had my teeth pulled out with "gas",dragged from the chair before youre awake and planted in front of the sink with icecold water to wash the blood away.to this day if i smell rubber it reminds me of the gas mask they clamped over your face to put you under ..BARBARIC ...
 
Hi Phil
I also had to go to to the school clinic on Gosta Green for sun ray treatment. Did we all have rickets in those days do you think or was it tp prevent us getting it, no one ever said the reason why I had to go for this treatment but I suppose the school nurse reccommended it and her word was usually law. Was the clinic in Gem Street?

I rember we all had to sit round the lamps in just our green schoool knickers wearing goggles. Some children also had to rest on a sort of small hammock type bed which was also used in the infant school for the smaller children to have an afternoon nap.

I also had to take malt and codliver oil and my mother would not buy virol which was more expensive. I can also remember having to take Yeastvite tablets as a pickme up when I was about 14 and sulphur tablets to purify my blood from the chemist on Nechells Green.

Louisa
 
Hi Phil
I also had to go to to the school clinic on Gosta Green for sun ray treatment. Did we all have rickets in those days do you think or was it tp prevent us getting it, no one ever said the reason why I had to go for this treatment but I suppose the school nurse reccommended it and her word was usually law. Was the clinic in Gem Street?

I rember we all had to sit round the lamps in just our green schoool knickers wearing goggles. Some children also had to rest on a sort of small hammock type bed which was also used in the infant school for the smaller children to have an afternoon nap.

I also had to take malt and codliver oil and my mother would not buy virol which was more expensive. I can also remember having to take Yeastvite tablets as a pickme up when I was about 14 and sulphur tablets to purify my blood from the chemist on Nechells Green.

Louisa
I remember going for sunray treatment once or twice a year durint the 50's and early 60's, usually in the autumn, it would be bloody cold when you left the building. also virol, and, malt and codliver oil, the kids today would probably throw up at the thought of it - mom used to warm it in front of the fire for a bit or it was difficult to get out of the big brown jars, but my brothers and me used to fight over it.
 
You can still get cod liver oil and malt. We do have people that come into our health food shop and order it. I laugh with them and say Mum used to give us it.....thats child abuse !!!!! Yuk !
 
never seemed to do us any harm, although i'm not sure it ever did any good either LOL
 
The clinic near Gosta Green was in Sheep Street just round the corner from Gem Street.
I too went there for 'sun-ray' treatment, ultra-violet lamp in one room as previously described and then into another room for infra-red treatment!
I later spent many times there having my teeth filled, it wasn't until I'd had more fillings than teeth that I refused to go any more.
Gem Street had a fairly rough school in those days the people living around that area were particularly deprived and some of the houses [back-to-backs] extremely cramped, up an entry which opened out into a yard with 8 or 10 houses in it with shared toilets at the end, not a sign of a garden or blade of grass anywhere!
Even the tumbleweeds went round in twos!:D
 
The school clinic I attended was on Stratford Road in the Springfield area. I can only remember going there for dental treatment. It was there that I got my fear of the dentist. I could stand that horrible gas mask, and was it normal for a loud whistling sound as you woke up? It was when the dentist was poking my teeth with a metal probe sort of thing, it went through a black spot on my tooth and touched the nerve inside. The pain was horrendous, I screamed and I have had a dreaded fear ever since. I think it was Alberta who spoke of having work done on her teeth on another thread and I posted then that I would be quite happy working doors on rough establishments, but if I got toothache it was accompanied by frequent trips to the lavatory.
 
I think this was once a school clinic. It’s on Slade Road, Erdington/Stockland Green. It looks like it’s about to be demolished, if not already gone.

I cut my hand at school in the 1960s and was sent here. Blood pouring from my hand and feeling a bit fragile, the nurse was very unsympathetic. She cleaned it, poured some sort of powder on the cut and applied a row of butterfly stitches. She was not gentle by any means, had no bedside manner, in fact she was quite rude. Consequently I refused to go back for a check up ! Viv.
 

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Think this was the place in 2014 but by 2015 it had closed. Looks (on streetview) as if it was sold 2016/17
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Planning permission granted in 2019 as follows
This proposal involves the demolition of a former NHS clinic and the erection of a two and three storey building providing 6no. one bedroom flats and 8no. two bedroom flats, all of which are to be affordable rented. Access to the development will be via Slade Road at the northern end of the site. 14 parking spaces are to be provided. Eight trees are to be removed to facilitate the development, including three on the site frontage.
 
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I think this was once a school clinic. It’s on Slade Road, Erdington/Stockland Green. It looks like it’s about to be demolished, if not already gone.
what a horrible clinic.i had to go there for sunlight treatment. there was a fence around the side were patients from highcroft shouted at you to give them fags etc. very disturbing.
 
That must have been upsetting Pete.

I know my mum was furious when I told about how I was treated there. She was adamant that I was not going back there for a check up. But other people may have had a better experience. Viv.
 
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i remember the sherbourne road school clinic where i had my teeth pulled out with "gas",dragged from the chair before youre awake and planted in front of the sink with icecold water to wash the blood away.to this day if i smell rubber it reminds me of the gas mask they clamped over your face to put you under ..BARBARIC ...
I underwent the same treatment but at the Harvey Road, Yardley clinic. My first experience of "Dental Treatment" that has given me a lifelong dread of dentists.
 
I remember the horror of school dentists, you were all lined up in the school hall and one by one had your teeth quickly looked at, then you were sent either to a queue to the left or the right to give your name to the nurse or just sent out if your teeth were o.k.
Most kids joined the long queue to the nurse. Then you got the appointment note to give your mom and dreaded the arrival of the day you went to the clinic. They always said 'close your eyes & think of Father Christmas', then the horrible gas mask was clamped on, as someone mentioned above it was a horrible smell of rubber that you never forget after all these years.
I had inherited crooked teeth from my mum and was one of the first to have an attempt at straightening my top front teeth. We were sent to somewhere in the city centre and I remember lying back in a chair and a huge machine like a starship ray gun swung over which took an X ray. I had to wear a plate for 2 years with a silver bar across the front and tiny springs behind which slowly pushed my teeth up to the bar. It did actually work reasonably well but back then your lower teeth could not be fixed so to this day I still have crooked teeth below.
Both of my young Grandchildren have also inherited crooked teeth but modern technology will give them a near perfect set and already are way better than mine.
 
My memory of the Dental Clinic at Springfield on Stratford Road follows the same as everyone else has written and it has left me with a lifelong fear of Dentists. I was about six years old in 1942 and had 5 teeth taken out after having that dreadful gas mask clamped on my face and trying to fight it off- that horrible smell of rubber and the dentist shouting at me - and the blood in the sink afterwards. My mother waiting outside knew nothing of this. I know that when we got home after walking back to Hall Green that my father was so furious that he went straight back to the clinic and had ‘words’ with the dentist - who happened to be the son of the headmaster of Sparkhill School.
 
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