RCSI Heritage Collections

With the Olympic Games officially getting under way today, we thought we’d look at some of RCSI’s Olympic connections. Pat O'Callaghan (1906-1991, Lic. 1927) First and foremost there is RCSI Licentiate Pat O’Callaghan (1906–1991, Lic. 1927). A hammer-thrower, he won Gold at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, the first competitor to do so under the Irish tricolour. ‘I am glad of my victory,’ he later said, ‘not for the victory for myself, but for the fact that the world has been shown that Ireland has a flag, that Ireland has a National Anthem, and, in fact, we have a nationality.’ Four years later, he took home Gold again from the Los Angeles Games. In 1936, owing to an internal dispute, Ireland did not send a team to Berlin – but O’Callaghan was there nonetheless, personally invited by Adolf Hitler (he was a hammer-throw enthusiast; the winner that year threw two metres short of O’Callaghan’s personal best). In later life O’Callaghan turned down Louis B. Mayer’s invitation for him to...

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...