Look: 30 nostalgic images take you back down the corridors of Birmingham's old hospitals

We take a look into our archives at the city's medical institutions of previous decades - and the history of healthcare in our city

In an urban area the size of Birmingham, healthcare has a vital and very visible role.

So it’s no surprise that there have been numerous hospitals in and around the city over the centuries, all playing their own part in meeting the needs of the population.

From specialist to general, the various hospitals in the city have dealt with the care of eyes, skin, accidents, children, childbirth and every other requirement.

Here we take a walk down the corridors to look back at some of the city's hospitals of yesteryear.

Today, Birmingham is best known for its new Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was treated after being shot in the head by the Taliban, and where life-saving research is carried out on treatments for leukaemia patients.

The current building, in Edgbaston, opened in 2010 as a replacement for the adjoining Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital.

The building was originally to be called Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital but government health chiefs said words were not allowed in front of a royal name.

The new site represented the latest transformation in healthcare for the city, where a number of hospitals had been founded back in the 19th century.

These included the Orthopaedic Hospital in 1817, the Skin Hospital in 1881 and the Birmingham & Midland Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital in Edmund Street in 1891.

Another was the Queens Hospital, a teaching hospital opened in Bath Row in 1841 by a young Birmingham surgeon called William Sands Cox.

Cox had earlier set up a Medical School in Temple Row. It opened in 1825, and a plaque on House of Fraser - which stands on the site today - commemorates his founding of the school, which went on to become Birmingham Royal School of Medicine in 1836 and then the Queen’s College in 1843.

The school and several other medical institutions were brought together at the University of Birmingham at Edgbaston in 1884.

And then the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was built next to the university in 1933 after there was objection to an extension of the General Hospital in the city centre.

For the first time, hospital medicine and clinical teaching were all brought together on one site.

Because the economy was bleak in Britain at that time, an appeal was launched to fund the £1million cost of the Queen Elizabeth.

Birmingham General Hospital had been founded in 1779 as a teaching hospital. Neville Chamberlain became a director and even continued fundraising for it after he became Prime Minister (1937-1940). It closed in the mid-90s.

The General Hospital and nearby Accident Hospital handled all the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.

Birmingham Accident Hospital - the world’s first trauma centre - had opened in 1941. Skin growing was first carried out here by surgeon Paul Levick.

Mr Levick began his career as a consultant plastic, burns and trauma surgeon at the site, where he pioneered specialist techniques in reconstructive surgery and set up Europe’s first skin culture laboratory to grow new skin for burns victims.

The Accident Hospital closed in 1995 and Mr Levick went on to become a cosmetic surgeon at The Hospital Group’s luxury clinic at Dolan Park in Bromsgrove.