RCSI Heritage Collections

  It’s Bloomsday this Sunday, celebrating the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) takes place.   RCSI has many Joycean connections, probably the most prominent of which is the appearance in Dubliners (1914) of the clock over the front door of 123 St Stephen’s Green (‘He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it was on the stroke of ten’).   RCSI Professor and President (and bon viveur ) Charles Cameron is one of the real-life people named in Ulysses itself (‘The annual dinner you know.   Boiled shirt affair.   The lord mayor was there… and sir Charles Cameron’). But did you know that Joyce had originally aspired to a career in medicine?   In April 1902, he enrolled at the Catholic University Medical School in Cecilia Street (now the Temple Bar home of Urban Outfitters).   At the time this School opened, it was unlicensed and unchartered, meaning its students were on the road to receiving essentially worthless qualifications.   But...

Typical marginal illustrations in the Lentaigne Manuscript This early fifteenth century manuscript, is  so styled to honour Sir John Lentaigne,  who presented it to the library of the Royal  College of Surgeon in Ireland in March  1851. The manuscript itself is a copy of  the  works of the English surgeon, John of  Arderne  (1307-c1390). The Lentaignes were landowners in  Normandy and Sir John's father, a  physician, came to Dublin in 1792. Born in Dublin in 1805 Sir John was an M.D. of  Trinity College, Dublin and a Fellow of the RCSI. A social-reformer he became  Inspector-General of Prisons and in 1861 he became the Commissioner of National Education. He died in 1886. John of Arderne, a contemporary of Chaucer, served Edward III as an army surgeon at the battle of Crécy in 1346. He was also a favourite of Edward's eldest son, the Black Prince (who granted him land in Connaught). Arderne's writin...