Earl Howe laid the foundation stone of the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery in Birmingham's new teaching hospital on 18 June 1840, the building being completed the following year at a cost of £8,746.

Henry Pepys, the Anglican Lord Bishop of Worcester, presided over the ceremony formally opening the 70-bed hospital.

In 1867, adjacent grounds to the west were purchased, and in 1871, Lord Leigh laid the foundation stone for a new outpatient department, originally known as the "Workmen's Extension" as it was funded by local working people, to the strains of a hymn written for the occasion by the Rev.

[10] On 14 August 1944 the President of the Hospital, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham welcomed the Minister of Health Sir Henry Willink at the opening of a new reception area and Outpatients department.

The Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour George Tomlinson described rehabilitation as "one of the great social advances which has emerged from this war".

In 1943 Leonard Colebrook, an expert on the earliest antibiotic Prontosil, active against streptococcus, moved with his burns unit from Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

[16] His political campaigning against unguarded fires and inflammable children's nightwear led to the Heating Appliances and Fireguards Act 1952.

Clinical trials confirmed Colebrooke's work showing that specialist positively pressurised dressing rooms reduced infections.

[20] He documented the treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, noting that the development of carbenicillin resistance used a single mechanism, which conferred protection against a range of antibiotics.

[20] In 1947, Dr Simon Sevitt set up a pathology department that covered bacteriology, haematology, biochemistry, histology, and morbid anatomy.

[21] His controversial 1959 paper on thromboembolism after fracture of the hip in old people[22] written in conjunction with Gallagher, which found that fatal pulmonary embolism might occur 30 days or more after surgery for hip fracture[23] triggered work by other researchers and revolutionised the profession's attitude to preventing, diagnosing, and treating the condition.

[26] In his 1957 lecture to the St. John Ambulance Brigade Surgeons' Conference in Harrogate,[27] Ruscoe Clarke described the old theory of shock and why it failed.

[28] Surgeon Ernest Cowell, writing in The British Official History of the Great War described the results of saline solution at the Battle of the Somme as "most disappointing".

The war injuries study of Grant and Reeve published 1951 recommended early transfusions for large wounds and suggested existing theories were inadequate.

Blood losses had been consistently underestimated in the past but the provision of large transfusions during the Korean War had saved people with injuries who would not otherwise have survived.

He recommended that where significant blood loss had occurred, even over an extended period of time, the patient should be transferred to expert medical care and receive an immediate transfusion.

[31] In 1960, Professor Gissane became honorary director of the Road Injuries Research Group, which investigated and analysed accidents on the newly opened M1 motorway at a time before seat belts were mandatory.

Investigation techniques included interviews with police, hospitals, survivors and coroners to study ways in which vehicle design could be changed to avoid accidents in the first place and to mitigate the injuries caused.

The only fortuitous aspect was the geographical location of the blast -within a mile of a hospital housing the only specialised burns unit in the country at the time.