RCSI Heritage Collections

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...

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...

The RCSI Heritage Collections were delighted to take part in the national Explore Your Archives 2014 campaign . Two lectures were organised for local secondary school students and staff of the College. These lectures entitled 'Archives Breathe Lives into History' illustrated that archives house material belonging to unknown individuals who have been forgotten by history. Archival material can be pieced together to breathe live back into a person's legacy which has lain dormant for tens if not hundreds of years. A prime example of this from the RCSI Heritage Collections is the Irish surgeon William Wallace.  Wallace was a controversial figure and because of his questionable methods in finding a cure for syphilis he was forgotten by the medical and historical worlds. William Wallace But it's not only Wallace who is brought to life through his collection. It is also the patients he treated. In preparation for a medical atlas relating to venereal and skin disease W...

With the announcement that the houses on Moore Street where the 1916 leaders surrendered are to be restored, the Heritage Collections thought of another reason why this row of houses should be saved. In number 20 Moore Street Dr. William Wallace (1791-1837) opened the first hospital to investigate and treat the numerous skin diseases afflicting the poor in Dublin. The first of it's kind in the whole British Empire. Dr. William Wallace (1791-1837) William Wallace was born in 1791 in Downpatrick, Co. Down to James Wallace and Elizabeth Ledlie. Little is known about Wallace's childhood. At the age of 17 decided to study medicine and was indentured to Dr. Charles Bowden of the Apothecaries Hall in Dublin. Two years later in 1810 he enrolled in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland as a medical student. Wallace worked as an apprentice to Charles Hawkes Todd, lecturer in Anatomy. Todd was also surgeon to the Richmond and Lock Hospitals, both had large numbers of patients w...