RCSI Heritage Collections

M icroscopes have always been a crucial tool used for the advancement of health and medicine. They allow medics, scientists and researchers to describe the body at a microscopic level more consistently and with confidence in what they see through them.  Today microscopes are used in the observation of bacteria and microbes as well as in the development of new chemicals and medicines used to combat disease.  RCSI Heritage Collections holds a large collection of microscopes dating back to the early 19 th century. Here, we take a ‘closer’ look at the history of the microscope, how they came about, as well as their introduction to Irish medical science (there’s an RCSI link!) History It was a Dutch father-son team named  Hans and Zacharias Janssen who  invented the first so-called compound microscope in the late 16th century when they discovered that, if they put a lens at the top and bottom of a tube and looked through it, objects on the other end became magnifi...

The word 'pamphlet' comes from a 780 line 12th century Latin comedic play. Bet you didn't know that! The play was called Pamphilus de amore and focuses on Pamphilus who seeks to woo Galatea. This small work was issued without any covers. This meant that the popular poem could be easily and widely copied and circulated in the form of a small slim booklet. Pamphilus was being read in England, France, Italy and Spain and by the early 13th century the word 'pamphlet' was being used in Middle English to describe a small thin book with no cover on or about a particular topic.   Pamphlet dated 1755 ( RCSI/PAMP/8c ) Pamphlet by Charles Marie de la Condamine ( RCSI/Pamp/16a ) With over 6,000 pamphlets in our Heritage Collections, a large scale cataloguing project was undertaken and is still ongoing to make them available online. By clicking here you will be brought to the RCSI Heritage Collection online catalogue hierarchical browser. If...

Today marks the 171st anniversary of the death of a man who despite achieving so much in the world of surgery is largely forgotten by it's population. He is recognised as introducing the microscope into Irish medicine in 1830, being Ireland's first investigator into the field of cancer research and for discovering the transverse folds of the rectum, which are also known as ' Houston's valves' . That man was one John Houston. John Houston 1802-1845 Houston was born in Northern Ireland in 1802. Little is known about his childhood before he was adopted by his maternal uncle, Dr Joseph Taylor. Taylor financed his nephew's education in medicine and in 1819 Houston was apprenticed to John Shekleton , a young dynamic surgeon and soon-to-be Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Museum. Houston's apprenticeship finished in 1824, the same year that Shekleton suddenly died at the age of 29. Houston lost his teacher, mentor and friend and on the da...

On a recent sojourn in Paris the RCSI Heritage Collections decided to visit the Catacombs of Paris which lie deep below the busy city. The catacombs are 2 kms long and are filled with over 6 million skeletons dating from the early 1700s to the mid 1800s. Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp in the Catacombs of Paris While in Paris a previous blog ( Skeletons, Specimens and a Shekleton! 8th May) came to mind. In May we learnt about specimens that were collected, created, preserved and used in the College as teaching aids back in the 1800s and early 1900s. Another teaching aid that has fallen out of practise but still holds a macabre beauty is that of the wax anatomical model. And where was the place to go if one wanted such models? Paris!! The problem facing medical school and students in the 1800s was the supply and preservation of cadavers long enough for detailed dissections to be carried out on them. A solution to this was the use of minutely detailed and quite graphic wax anatomic...

RCSI Museum circa 1900s Museum's full of curious specimens, eerie skeletons and natural wonders are fascinating. A fascination that has been awoken in younger generations through the captivating TV programmes by David Attenborough. The College housed quite a large museum and was even pronounced as 'one of the most valuable in Europe' by Friedrich Tiedemann and Jules Cloquet  in the 1800s. In 1820 the College decided to establish a museum on a level par with the scale of their other departments. A committee was formed and they were empowered to appoint a Curator at once. Candidates for the position of Curator had to exhibit specimens of their work.    Shekleton's mercurial specimen Baby orangutan skeleton E.a.90 A young anatomist named John Shekleton presented his specimen of a mercurial injection of the lymphatics of the lower extremity which, it has been said, excited the wonder of all who saw it. This specimen is still on view in the Anatomy ...