Early records shed little light upon medical care at Bradfield before the foundation of the original Sanitorium, established as the result of a virulent scarlet fever epidemic which struck the village and College in 1863, causing the death of Headmaster Stephen Denning’s young daughter among others.  Some anxious parents withdrew their sons and admissions declined.  To improve the college’s medical provision, the first dedicated Sanitorium was built in 1865, with the insight of nursing pioneer and social reformer Florence Nightingale.  When advising the Council, Nightingale wrote with characteristic asperity, ‘It seems as if gentlemen sent their sons to school as much to have Scarlet Fever as to learn Latin—and with much more certainty of catching the Fever than the Latin.’  The Sanitorium occupied part of what is now the northeastern range of Army House where it meets the College Gateway.  In 1889, when this building was extended to form part of the newly created Army House, an enlarged Sanitorium was built on the Reading Road.  The Sanitorium remained on this location for almost a century.  In 1977 its premises were converted to accommodate Loyd House, and the Sanitorium moved to Nutters Furlong, a residence which is now the private side of Stevens House, moving to its current location in Bridge House in 1996.  

Over the years, in addition to Florence Nightingale, the Sanitorium has been associated with several notable medical practitioners.  One of Bradfield’s much-loved Matrons, Kate Luard, who joined the College in 1924, had served with great distinction as a nurse during the First World War.  Luard worked in Casualty Clearing Stations near the battlelines, in 1917 serving as Head Sister of one which treated abdominal wounds during the Battle of Passchendaele, supervising the work of 40 nurses and almost 100 orderlies.  She published two collections of her wartime letters (the second while at Bradfield) creating one of the most powerful records of the horrors of war and soldiers’ extraordinary suffering and heroism on the Western Front. 

Dr Norman Joy, who served as the school’s Physician during the first decades of the twentieth century, was an expert entomologist and ornithologist, who excelled as a field naturalist and published widely.  Joy’s Practical Handbook of British Beetles (1932) became a standard reference work, and he also wrote a very popular guide How to Know British Birds in 1936.  Joy was a committed supporter of Bradfield’s Scientific Society, offering lectures and training in field work to pupils.  He organised conservation projects to chart the migration of birds through Bradfield by recording annual sightings and later by ringing, providing data to assess the health of the bird population and identify any factors contributing to its decline.  Joy and his colleague, Matron Frances Storm, became the subject of a humorous anecdote describing the process by which pupils who became ill at night first consulted the nurse and then saw the doctor on the following day: 

'The Storm endureth but for the night; 

And Joy cometh in the morning.' 

During the bombing of London in the Second World War, Bradfield’s Sanatorium provided a refuge for the Civil Defence Corps, firefighters, drivers and other personnel, who generally stayed for a week to recover from the physical and mental strain of coping with the Blitz.  They slept in the Sanitorium, ate in Hall and were guests of boys in the boarding houses.  Many were so affected by the bombing that at first they wore their air raid helmets when walking from the Sanitorium to the Hall.  The Sanatorium also sometimes provided wartime accommodation for officers who attended training courses at Bradfield, as in the summer of 1943, when 60 Canadian officers visited for a course on ‘The British Way and Purpose’.