What a 100-Year-Old Paisley Health Institute Can Teach Us About Health Today
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of visiting the Russell Institute in Paisley as part of Doors Open Day.
I’ve passed this beautiful building many times, but being able to step inside and explore its history gave me a completely different appreciation of what it represented.
What fascinated me most wasn’t simply the architecture.
It was the thinking behind it.
Almost 100 years ago, people in Paisley were already recognising something that remains at the heart of healthcare today: preventing ill health and supporting the body before problems become more serious matters.
And perhaps our modern ideas about exercise, nutrition and preventative health aren’t quite as modern as we think.
A remarkable building with health at its heart
The Russell Institute officially opened in March 1927, having been commissioned by Agnes Russell in memory of her brothers, Robert and Thomas.
It was created as a child-welfare clinic for the people of Paisley and Renfrewshire and became home to a wide range of health services.
Even the building itself was innovative.
Its design by J. Steel Maitland was deliberately different from the everyday architecture of the time. Its construction used a reinforced-concrete frame, while large windows maximised natural light. Outside, the sculptures and symbolism reflected the health and welfare work taking place within.
Inside, many reminders of its past remain.
During my visit I could still see pieces of exercise equipment, alongside old telephones, electrical fittings, fireplaces and features from the former living quarters.
Walking through those rooms felt like stepping into another era of healthcare.
Some of the treatments used historically have, quite rightly, disappeared as medicine has advanced.
Others have remarkably familiar foundations.
Exercise as healthcare isn’t new
Today we increasingly hear about exercise being “prescribed” to support health.
It can sound like a modern idea.
It isn’t.
Physical activity and therapeutic movement have been used in different forms within healthcare for generations.
At the Russell Institute, its history as a child-welfare centre included orthopaedic care, alongside a much broader philosophy of helping children remain fit and healthy and identifying disease early.
That particularly interested me because it mirrors something I strongly believe in today.
Exercise isn’t simply about becoming fitter, losing weight or changing how we look.
Movement helps us build and maintain the physical capacity we need for life.
For a developing child, movement helps build strength, coordination and physical function.
For an adult, it helps us maintain muscle, mobility, balance and independence.
The exercises may have changed.
Our understanding of physiology has certainly advanced.
But the fundamental importance of movement has not.
Rickets, sunlight and a fascinating piece of Scottish health history
One of the subjects discussed during my visit was rickets.
Rickets affects developing bones and historically caused considerable illness and skeletal deformity in children. We now understand that nutritional rickets is strongly associated with inadequate vitamin D and/or calcium.
In industrial Scotland, where poor diet, overcrowding and limited exposure to sunlight were common, rickets became a significant public-health problem.
By the 1920s, doctors were investigating treatments including cod-liver oil and ultraviolet light — effectively using “artificial sunlight”. Scottish medical writing from 1927 documents the use of ultraviolet lamps in treating children with rickets.
The consequences of rickets didn’t necessarily end in childhood either.
Severe rickets during a girl’s development could alter the shape of the pelvis. Years later, that could make childbirth extremely difficult or impossible by the vaginal route.
This became an important part of Scottish obstetric history.
In late nineteenth-century Glasgow, women with severely deformed pelvises resulting from childhood rickets were among the patients who helped establish successful Caesarean section in British obstetric practice.
Professor Murdoch Cameron of Glasgow reported a series of successful Caesarean deliveries in women with rachitic pelvises in 1890.
Think about that connection for a moment.
A nutritional and environmental problem during childhood could influence skeletal development, which could then affect pregnancy and childbirth many years later.
It is an extraordinary demonstration of why health across the lifespan matters.
This thinking wasn’t confined to Paisley
The Russell Institute wasn’t the only Scottish building to reflect changing ideas about health and wellbeing. Across Scotland, civic authorities and philanthropists were investing in buildings designed to improve the health of their communities. Bon Accord Baths in Aberdeen, opened in 1940, is another fascinating example. Although it wasn’t a clinical healthcare facility like the Russell Institute, its large swimming pool, public bathing facilities and Turkish baths reflected the growing recognition of hygiene, physical activity and recreation as important parts of public wellbeing. Today the building is recognised for its architectural significance as well as its place in Aberdeen’s social history.
What connects these buildings for me isn’t that they provided the same services — they didn’t. It’s the philosophy behind them.
Whether through child welfare and preventative healthcare in Paisley or access to swimming, bathing and physical recreation in Aberdeen, Scotland was creating spaces specifically intended to help communities live healthier lives.
And that makes me wonder how many other buildings across Scotland tell a similar story.
Vitamin D: almost 100 years later, we’re still talking about it
Our understanding of vitamin D has advanced enormously since the Russell Institute opened.
We now know that vitamin D plays an important role in calcium and phosphate regulation and therefore in maintaining healthy bones.
And here in Scotland, sunlight remains particularly relevant.
The NHS advises that between October and early March, sunlight in the UK isn’t sufficient for our bodies to produce enough vitamin D. Adults, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, should consider a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms of vitamin D during autumn and winter. Some people at greater risk of deficiency may require supplementation throughout the year.
Pregnancy has additional nutritional considerations too, including the recommendation for folic acid before conception and during early pregnancy.
So although we know far more today about why these nutrients matter, the fundamental relationship between nutrition, our environment and lifelong health remains.
What can we learn from them today?
Standing inside the Russell Institute made me think about how easily we’re attracted by what’s new in health.
A new diet.
A new supplement.
A new workout.
A new piece of technology.
A new health trend promising to change everything.
Yet the Russell Institute — and other pioneering health and wellbeing buildings across Scotland — remind us that some of the principles we’re discussing today have been recognised for generations.
Move your body.
Nourish it well.
Build strength and physical capacity.
Prevent problems where possible rather than waiting for them to become bigger ones.
And create communities and environments that make healthier living possible.
Our scientific understanding has advanced enormously since the Russell Institute opened in 1927, and some of the treatments practised a century ago have rightly disappeared. But others have evolved because the principles behind them were sound.
We now understand far more about vitamin D and bone health.
We understand far more about muscle, strength and healthy ageing.
We understand more about the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular health, metabolic health, mental wellbeing and independence.
And increasingly, we’re talking about exercise as an important component of preventative healthcare.
Perhaps the interesting thing is that we’re not discovering that movement matters. We’re understanding more clearly why it matters.
For me, that’s what made walking around the Russell Institute so fascinating.
Almost 100 years separate the healthcare delivered within those rooms from the work I do with people today.
The equipment has changed.
The science has advanced.
Our understanding of the human body has become infinitely more sophisticated.
But two of the foundations remain remarkably familiar:
Exercise and good nutrition.
They’re not trends.
They’re not quick fixes.
And they’re certainly not new.
They’re an investment in the body we need to carry us through life.