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Dr Golla of Newlands, Frenchay

Professor Frederick Lucien Golla, OBE, FRCP, was born in London in 1878. 

He was educated at Tonbridge; Magdalen College, Oxford; and Queen Square Hospital, London.

1907: admitted as a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP).

1908: married Therese d’Haussaire. They had one daughter.

1914: joined the RAMC as Lieutenant and served in the 2nd Division in France. He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the OBE.

1918: admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP).

1919: married Yvonne Ray.

Dr Golla was Honorary Physician at St George’s Hospital in London and at Maida Vale Hospital. He became interested in Mental disorders and in the early 1930s became installed to the chair of Mental Pathology at London University.

1939: When Dr Golla came to live at Newlands, Frenchay, Mass was said every Sunday in the drawing room, and soon led to further developments in the stables...

1939: at the age of 60, Golla was invited to become the first Director of the Burden Neurological Institute; opened that year and endowed by Mrs RG Burden, widow of Harold Nelson Burden, co-founders of the Stoke Park Colony, Bristol, opened in about 1904 for the care of the mentally deficient.

Among the apparatus initially used were a number of pieces smuggled out of Czech-Slovakia by a young Czech scientist, a Professor Reise, formerly of Prague University, who escaped by air just before the Germans entered Prague. Reise became a member of the staff at the Institute.

Dr Golla introduced the electrical treatment of melancholia, devised in Italy, using a machine built at the Institute. He also performed the world’s first operation on the brain to relieve mental suffering. Treatments devised by Golla are now in general use all over the world.

1959: he retired at the age of 81.

1963: Mrs Yvonne Golla died at Newlands.

1968: Professor FL Golla, at the age of 90, died at his home, Newlands, Frenchay.

A colleague of Dr Golla said of him,

 "He was a remarkable man."

Dr FL Golla, St George's Hospital, London, 1906.

Newlands, Frenchay, had previously been owned by the Hewitt Family.

The house has since been demolished.

The drawing room