About the History of Medicine Walk in Edinburgh
Between 1751 and 1800 the Scottish Universities were responsible for educating 85% of British doctors , the medical faculty at Edinburgh having been established in 1726. The Royal College of Surgeons was founded in 1505 and is the oldest medical institution of its kind in the world. The city is steeped in medical history punctuated by discoveries in anaesthesia, antisepsis and home to famous practioners such as Alexander Fleming, Elsie Inglis (pioneer in women’s medicine) and Conan Doyle who evolved his method of detecting criminals from his medical tutor. Many foreign doctors were and still are trained here including the renowned Polish medical school set up while Poles were in exile.
Our walk starts in the Old College of Edinburgh University (founded 1583) where medicine was taught initially and where current excavations have revealed a cache of chemical instruments used in its teaching. The adjacent Raeburn Room has a fine collection of portraits of notable 18th Century medical me
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Between 1751 and 1800 the Scottish Universities were responsible for educating 85% of British doctors , the medical faculty at Edinburgh having been established in 1726. The Royal College of Surgeons was founded in 1505 and is the oldest medical institution of its kind in the world. The city is steeped in medical history punctuated by discoveries in anaesthesia, antisepsis and home to famous practioners such as Alexander Fleming, Elsie Inglis (pioneer in women’s medicine) and Conan Doyle who evolved his method of detecting criminals from his medical tutor. Many foreign doctors were and still are trained here including the renowned Polish medical school set up while Poles were in exile.
Our walk starts in the Old College of Edinburgh University (founded 1583) where medicine was taught initially and where current excavations have revealed a cache of chemical instruments used in its teaching. The adjacent Raeburn Room has a fine collection of portraits of notable 18th Century medical men. Continuing past Greyfriars Churchyard where an early professor of anatomy has a grisly gravestone we pass the Medical Faculty and other buildings with medical links such as the 19th century Royal Infirmary. Our first visit is to the Surgeons’ Hall Museum containing an important collection of medical, anatomical and pathological material from the 18th century onwards.
Continuing through the Grassmarket, former site of executions, we pass the quarter where the infamous ‘Resurrectionists’ or ‘Anatomists’ Burke and Hare murdered their victims in order to sell their bodies for dissection. We also see the Watch Tower set up at the corner of St Cuthbert’s graveyard to survey any would-be body snatchers!
Crossing to the New Town’s elegant neo-classical squares we admire the grand houses where the physicians lived including that of James Young Simpson , who discovered chloroform. We see inside the Royal College of Physicians founded in 1681 and recently modernised to hold conferences . The Portrait gallery nearby contains some significant portraits of medical men including those responsible for recent developments in cancer and surgery , bringing our medically themed walk into the 20th century.
