RCSI Heritage Collections

What has an RCSI President from 1797 and a character from Father Ted have in common??  A weird fondness for cats, it seems.    Here is a quote describing a trait of William Hartigan, President of RCSI in 1797... ' William Hartigan was noted for his fondness of cats. He frequently, on his professional rounds of visits, brought a pair of kittens with him, ensconced in the deep coat-pockets worn early in the last century '. - History of the  Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland by Sir Charles Cameron While below is Father Ted's description of Matty Hislop from the Lent episode of Father Ted called ' Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading '... Ted: 'God almighty, when I think of the sacrifices Matty Hislop made' Dougal: 'Who?' Ted: 'He was a notorious drunkard who found God and then decided to punish himself for his sins. Oh, he used to do all kinds of things. Like he had a terrible allergic reaction to cats. So instead of avoid...

Tonight is the Littlewoods Ireland Blog Awards  and excitement levels are reaching fever pitch in the Heritage Collections!  Woo hooo! Let's get this party started! The awards ceremony will be at Duffy's Circus in Dun Laoghaire so to get in the mood, we decided we would have a look at some glass lantern slides taken of animals in Dublin Zoo in the 1890s and early 1900s. These slides are part of the J Alfred Scott Collection and give a great insight into one of Dublin's favourite visitor attractions, Dublin Zoo . Up until recently exotic animals were part and parcel of the circus. Thankfully the times they are a changing and animals are no longer being made perform in circuses. Instead they are getting to live the rest of their lives out in a happy carefree environment. Not having anything related to circuses in the collections but having established a now tenuous link between circuses and animals the (il)logical conclusion is to look at animals from Dublin Zoo wh...

With a number of Irish Olympic medals in the bag from Rio 2016 and (fingers crossed) more medals to be brought home by those competing in the Paralympics , we thought it was time to look at some medals housed in the RCSI Heritage Collections . Sir William Thomson (1843-1909) Recently the College acquired a set of four medals belonging to Sir William Thomson PRCSI 1896. Thomson was born in Downpatrick, Co. Down on 29th June 1843. He undertook his medical education in Queen's College, Galway and Queen's University, Belfast receiving his M.D. and M.Ch in 1872. By 1873 he was Visiting Surgeon to the Richmond Hospital and Lecturer in Anatomy in the Carmichael School of Medicine. Thomson became a Fellow of RCSI in 1874 being unanimously elected as President two years later. Further distinctions rapidly followed; Surgeon to the Lord Lieutenant, Surgeon-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria and Honorary Surgeon to King Edward VII. Thomson was Chief Surgeon to the Irish Hospital in...

That's us! Littlewoods Ireland Blog Awards announced the finalists of the Arts & Culture Corporate category  on Wednesday 31st August. Low and behold we made the cut! You did not I hear you cry.  We certainly did we reply! Thursday 15th September will see a gathering of blog creators, blog writers, blog enthusiasts and blog fashionistas at Duffy's Circus in Dun Laoghaire . We can feel it in our waters that a fun night will be had by all and being from a College of Surgeons, that's a medical fact!! (Disclaimer: we may work in a College of Surgeons but we are in no way  medically trained  so that is most definitely not a fact. But it could be a premonition....) Now it's time to to get the gúna out, the hair appointment booked and the arm candy ready! Our dream Littlewoods Ireland Blog Awards ensemble! - Researched and written by Meadhbh Murphy