RCSI Heritage Collections

  This year’s One Dublin, One Book, The Coroner’s Daughter , is historical fiction and a crime novel, set in the Dublin of 1816. Moreover, it is medical historical fiction, and imagined around an RCSI anatomist. So, with this book in our minds, let’s take a glimpse at the archives with RCSI Heritage Collections. In the year 1816, RCSI had been operating under its First Charter, which was granted to the College by George III in 1784. The surgeons had formally broken the historical ties with the Guild of Barber-Surgeons- a goal the College founders had set out to achieve when they met and formed the Dublin Society of Surgeons in 1783.   RCSI was established to set and support professional standards for surgical training and practice. RCSI Royal Charter, 1784 Rules of the Dublin Society of Surgeons, 1783   The backdrop of ‘the College of Surgeons’ in 1816 would have been the first iteration of the building erected on a disused Quaker burial ground, on St. Stephen’s Gre...

Fully aware that the moment he died [John] Hunter would come for his body, [Charles] Byrne had concocted a plan designed to thwart him. As his friends leaned forward to hear his dying words, Byrne made them vow to seal his body in a lead coffin, ship it to the middle of the English Channel and plunge it to the bottom of the sea, far from the reach of even the most resourceful anatomist.  - The Knife Man ; Wendy Moore pg.313 Or so Charles Byrne thought!! Byrne was an Irish giant who had arrived in London in April 1782 to earn a living from showcasing his remarkable height of seven foot eight inches. But in doing so he caught the eye of the most renowned surgeon and anatomist of the time, John Hunter .  John Hunter (1728- 1793) painted by Sir Joshua Reynold in 1786. Note the long shin and foot bones in the top right corner! John Hunter was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in and around 13 February 1728, his exact birth date isn't known. Hunter did...

The 1555 copy of Andreas Vesalius’  De Humani Corporis Fabrica   is perhaps the most important book held by RCSI Library.  Just over one hundred copies of this work are known to exist worldwide and RCSI holds the only known copy in Ireland. It is considered a masterpiece in the fields of both anatomy and art. It is 500 years since the birth of Andreas Vesalius one of the greatest anatomists and dissectors of the medical world. BBC4 recently ran a series on TV called The Beauty of Anatomy   which features a different anatomist for each of its 5 episodes. One of these anatomists was none other than the great Vesalius.   Engraving by Tintoretto of Vesalius c1540  Vesalius was born in Brussels on 31 December 1514. He started his medical studies in the University of Paris in 1533 where he learned the art of dissection. In 1538 he had moved to the University of Padua where he received his M.D. and was appointed a lecturer in anatomy. It was here that...