RCSI Heritage Collections

The first RCSI student newsletter, Mistura, was published in 1953. Successive class cohorts have continued the tradition, with student newsletters and magazines coming and going under many names and in various forms ever since. As part of the most recent traunch of newly-digitised material from the College Archive to hit our Digital Collections site, you can now explore select RCSI student newsletters from the 1960s  here .  Peering Into the Past Student newsletters provide a unique insight into the evolution of the student experience at RCSI. Through the written word – serious, creative, and comic – they chart the academic and extra-curricular activities of the student body over the past 70 years. Sporting and social life feature prominently, club and society outings providing the same distraction and release for students past as they continue to do for those present. From the stress of exams to the challenges of finding suitable accommodation, some of the academic and social issues d

The town of Saint-Lô in Normandy was a German stronghold in Northern France in the lead up to the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944. Like many others towns in the region, it was all but destroyed by Allied bombings during the effort to liberate Northern France from German occupation in the weeks and months that followed. Central to rehabilitation efforts in Saint-Lô was a small group of humanitarian missionaries from Ireland who set up a Red Cross hospital in the town’s remains, L'hôpital irlandais de Saint-Lô. Among these was nurse Mary Frances Crowley, who served as Matron of the hospital at Saint-Lô between 1945 and 1947. A pioneer of nurse education in Ireland, she later became the Foundation Dean of the RCSI Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in 1974. Mary Frances Crowley,  painted by William Nathans for  RCSI Women on Walls (2019) To commemorate the anniversary of Crowley’s birth on 1 August 1906, Project Archivist Erin McRae tells the story of Mary Crowley’s role in the establishm

With the Olympic Games officially getting under way today, we thought we’d look at some of RCSI’s Olympic connections. Pat O'Callaghan (1906-1991, Lic. 1927) First and foremost there is RCSI Licentiate Pat O’Callaghan (1906–1991, Lic. 1927). A hammer-thrower, he won Gold at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, the first competitor to do so under the Irish tricolour. ‘I am glad of my victory,’ he later said, ‘not for the victory for myself, but for the fact that the world has been shown that Ireland has a flag, that Ireland has a National Anthem, and, in fact, we have a nationality.’ Four years later, he took home Gold again from the Los Angeles Games. In 1936, owing to an internal dispute, Ireland did not send a team to Berlin – but O’Callaghan was there nonetheless, personally invited by Adolf Hitler (he was a hammer-throw enthusiast; the winner that year threw two metres short of O’Callaghan’s personal best). In later life O’Callaghan turned down Louis B. Mayer’s invitation for him to

  It’s Bloomsday this Sunday, celebrating the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) takes place.   RCSI has many Joycean connections, probably the most prominent of which is the appearance in Dubliners (1914) of the clock over the front door of 123 St Stephen’s Green (‘He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it was on the stroke of ten’).   RCSI Professor and President (and bon viveur ) Charles Cameron is one of the real-life people named in Ulysses itself (‘The annual dinner you know.   Boiled shirt affair.   The lord mayor was there… and sir Charles Cameron’). But did you know that Joyce had originally aspired to a career in medicine?   In April 1902, he enrolled at the Catholic University Medical School in Cecilia Street (now the Temple Bar home of Urban Outfitters).   At the time this School opened, it was unlicensed and unchartered, meaning its students were on the road to receiving essentially worthless qualifications.   But in 1856, RCSI solved the problem by of

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that took place along the Normandy coast during World War II. The historic operation saw the Allied Forces mount a large-scale invasion of occupied France that ultimately tipped the course of World War II in the Allies favour.   Douglas W. Montgomery , a Fellow and Past President of RCSI and member of the Royal Army Medical Corps was one of those whom landed on that historic day. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Douglas W. Montgomery received an Irish education and graduated with an MB from Trinity College Dublin in 1940. He was awarded the Haughton Medal and awards for clinical medicine and surgery at St Patrick Dun’s Hospital, as well as the Bennett Medal and Surgical Prize. He went on to receive his Fellowship from RCSI. On 6 June 1944 while serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Montgomery took part in the D-Day landing. He was to be the first allied surgeon on the beach. Shortly after landing and having travelled for about

In March 2024, I joined RCSI Library as project archivist to appraise and catalogue a couple of discreet archive collections within their Heritage collections. The first collection I am tackling is RCSI's Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, as they are celebrating their 50 th anniversary this coming October. My progress and some findings on this particular collection will be the subject of my first RCSI Heritage Collections blog.   The RCSI Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery was founded in 1974 and is one of the longest-serving providers of nurse education in Ireland. It provides registered nurses and midwives with education and training at the highest standard to support the maintenance of their professional development and competence. The Faculty of Nursing consists of a Dean and twelve members who constitute the Board of the Faculty and it is bound by the constitutions of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Council of the College. In addition, there is also full time a