RCSI Heritage Collections

In this lovely, yet completely crazy, Irish summer weather, you may decide to head out and take a stroll around Dublin city. While doing so you will encounter numerous examples of Victorian and Georgian architecture, marble and red brick facades and the modern changes that are happening all over the city. But what you mightn't know is that some of the buildings you look at, pass by every day and may even go in to were once hospitals. Dublin was, and still, is a major international centre for surgical and medicinal excellence and with this development of surgical methods and practise came hospitals. So below are some examples of these long lost hospitals. Next time you are enjoying a glass of wine in The Ely Wine Bar on Ely Place here's a fact you can impress your friends with. Next door in 23 Ely Place there was the Dublin Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye and Ear from 1872-1875 Dublin Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye and Ear, 23 Ely Place All those times you were...

In April 1865 Mary Anne Dooley, a 14 year old girl, was brought to Jervis St. Hospital after an accident in the paper mill where she worked had left her right hand lacerated and torn. On duty was a respected and learned medical man who decided that in one last attempt to save the girl's life he would attempt the first ever human to human blood transfusion in Ireland. This man was Robert McDonnell. Robert McDonnell (1828-1889) McDonnell was a confident surgeon who came from a prominent medical family. His father, John McDonnell, had carried out the first amputation using ether as an inhalation anaesthetic in Ireland on New Years Day 1847 in the Richmond Hospital. So you can say Robert was definitely following in his father's first steps! Robert was born in 1828 in Dublin. He entered Trinity College Dublin in 1844 and was apprenticed to Richard Carmichael in November 1845. He graduated with B.A and M.B in 1850 and obtained his Licence from the RCSI in February 1851. Robert...