The Min

The Royal National Hospital For Rheumatic Diseases, affectionately known as the Mineral Hospital or Min ,was built in 1738. Notable Bathonians collaborated in the project. Ralph Allen [who donated the stone for the building], John Wood [who gave his plans and time for free] and Beau Nash who raised the funds and Dr Oliver saw to the building of a Mineral Water Hospital for the care of ‘poor leppers, cripples and other indigent persons resorting to Bath for cure and to discriminate real objects of charity from vagrants and other impostors who crowd both the Church and town to the annoyance of the gentry’.
Initially the hospital had room for 110 patients mostly ‘the paralytic and the leprous’. Thousands of wounded servicemen from the campaigns in the Crimea, South Africa and the First World War were treated here. During the Second World War the Min was closed to civilians to enable the treatment of injured soldiers who bathed in the hospital’s private baths. National Health Funding for Spa treatment was only withdrawn in the 1970s.
The triangular pediment carving depicts the story of the Good Samaritan meant to symbolise the charitable work of the hospital.