RCSI Heritage Collections

After the success of RCSI Heritage Collections last appeal for help with an unsolved mystery , we are again asking for you, the virtual community, to help locate a relative of James Duncan, College Porter in 1916 .  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While researching for the College's 2016 exhibition Surgeons & Insurgents: RCSI and the Easter Rising   we stumbled across the eye-witness account of how the insurgents gained entry into the College. What a discovery! But unfortunately the discovery was soon tinged with sadness. Letter accompanying James Duncan's petition The College Porter at the time, James Duncan wrote this eye-witness account, had it signed and witnessed by a solicitor then sent it to the President and Council of the College. The reason being that after the dust had settled on the 1916 Easter Rising, Duncan was fired from his job of 27 years. James Duncan, who had served...

Is there anything more romantic than giving your loved one a bottle of Valentine's Meat Juice this Valentine's Day?  A bottle of Valentine's Meat Juice still sealed and containing juice (RCSI/MI/1544) There is if you use it to disguise the taste of arsenic as Florence Maybrick did in 1889! But first what is Valentine's Meat juice? Brought into production in Richmond, VA, in 1871, Valentine’s Meat Juice became popular with orthodox physicians and was advertised in professional publications, including the   British Medical Journal . Its inventor, Mann S.Valentine, told of its origins in his   A Brief History of the  Production of Valentine’s Meat Juice, together with  Testimonials of the Medical Profession   (1874). A family member, thought to be his wife Anna Maria Grey Valentine, was in great danger from ‘ a severe and protracted  derangement of the organs of digestion .’ She could not take normal food, yet none of the available inv...

As many of you may have seen while walking around the city last weekend, a number of buildings were lit up red in honour of Bram Stoker. The people at the Bram Stoker Festival, which ran from the 26th to 28th October 2013, wanted to highlight the many buildings that had some connection to Bram, his family and his writings. The College was lit a beautiful shade of red in reference to Bram's most famous literary work Dracula.  123 Stephens Green light up in honour of Bram Stoker Bram's brother, William Thornley Stoker was a graduate of the RCSI and become President in 1894-1896. A detailed account of his life can be found on the Royal College of Physicians recent blog post http://rcpilibrary.blogspot.ie/2013/10/real-and-imaginary-medics-in-life-of.html Having such a skilled and prominent surgeon as a brother it is easy to see how Bram could have drawn inspiration from Thornley for his writings. But Bram's other brother's could also have fed his creative mind. ...