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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Stoke Mandeville
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Hospital in Buckinghamshire with a worldwide reputation for its treatment of spinal injuries. It developed this role, together with its almost equally well-known plastic surgery programme, as a result of specializing in service casualties during World War II. The extensive site was in use for medical purposes from about 1920, when it was an isolation hospital for TB patients.
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Ludwig Guttman (1899–1980) pioneered at Stoke Mandeville the use of athletics as therapy for those with paraplegia (paralysis from the waist down). In 1948, to coincide with the Wembley Olympic Games, he organized Stoke Mandeville Games in wheelchairs. The event was repeated four years later, when some Dutch ex-servicemen came to England to compete, and in 1960 in Rome the Paralympic Games became for the first time directly associated with the Olympics.
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