RCSI Heritage Collections

 Death or Surgery: The Quest for a Painless, Waking Sleep  On October 16th, 1846, William Thomas Green Morton, a dentist, completed the first successful public demonstration of inhaled ether, relieving surgical pain at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It is because of this first successful public demonstration of the use of an anaesthetic that each year on October 16th we celebrate the history and discovery of anaesthesia for use in surgeries. If one can imagine that before these pioneering doctors, surgeons and dentists, any kind of medical procedure and the inevitable pain that came with it meant copious amounts of alcohol, herbal mixtures containing opium alkaloids, hypnotism or pieces of leather/wood to bite down on. This was the backdrop to which Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829); Henry Hill Hickman (1800-1830); William Clarke (1819-1898); Crawford Williamson Long (1815-1878); Horace Wells (1815-1848); William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868); John MacDonnell (1796...

In celebration of World Pharmacists Day, RCSI Heritage Collections are highlighting materials in the Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson (HCR) Pharmaceutical Chemists collection and marking events which have occurred to celebrate the release of the collection to the public.  The collection was donated to RCSI Heritage Collections in October 2023, by Michael and Christopher Shiell, both great-grandsons of one of the company’s founders, Henry Conyngham. The Shiell brothers worked as joint-managing directors of the company until the pharmacies were sold to Boots in 1998. The following blog post will outline brief historical context of the company and its founders and will then explore some collection highlights and end with how researchers can access the collection.  Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson Pharmaceutical Chemists:  Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson Pharmaceutical Chemists was founded in 1897 by William Hayes (1843-1918), Henry Conyngham (1845-1931) and Sir Thomas W. Robin...

  As RCSI’s new School of Dentistry opens this week, we thought we’d look back at its predecessor. RCSI has the distinction of creating the first Professorship in Dental Surgery in Ireland or Britain.   This was in 1884, when the inaugural appointee was Richard Theodore Stack (1848 – 1909).   Curiously, Stack never intended to be a dentist.   He had studied medicine at Trinity College, coming first in his class and winning various scholarships, and seemed destined for a glittering medical career – until, that is, a bout of rheumatic fever left him so deaf, at the age of 26, that he could no longer use a stethoscope.   He switched his focus, graduating in dentistry from Harvard University in 1877.   For the rest of his life, he actively disliked being called ‘Doctor’ – his door-plate, visiting cards and book stamp all read ‘Dentist Stack'. Dentist Richard Theodore Stack by Walter Osborne  (courtesy of the British Dental Association Museum). Returning to...