History of the School of Physic
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest third level education institution did not have a medical school until the year 1711. Before this, prospective physicians had to look abroad to undergo tuition.
John Stearne, whom the medical library in St. James’s University Hospital is named after, played a pivotal role in laying the groundwork for medical education in Trinity College Dublin. Stearne was a student of Trinity College who left Ireland to study Medicine in Cambridge. He left England, returned to Dublin and was made a Fellow of Trinity in 1651. Later, he became Professor of Physic from 1662 until his death in 1669. He was instrumental in founding what later became the Royal College of Physicians Ireland (RCPI). He achieved this through royal charter in 1667, forming the “Colledge of Phyisitans in Dublin” or the "The Fraternity of Physicians of Trinity Hall”. Initially, it operated as a daughter institution of Trinity College, housed in Trinity Hall on Hoggen Green (now College Green). Before the foundation of the College of Physicians, Trinity Hall was in disrepair following the 1641 rebellion and the Dublin Corporation wanted it returned. Stearne offered the solution that he would raise the funds to restore Trinity Hall on condition that it be used to house a college of physicians under the authority of Trinity College. Under this agreement, medical students would become members of Trinity and be taught in conjunction with the College of Physicians, while Trinity maintained the control over key aspects of the college, such as the nomination of the President of the College.
"The College should have the nomination of the President of the College of Physicians, and that the President and Fellows of that College should give their professional services without fees to the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College."
By the end of the seventeenth century, the ‘Colledge of Phyisitians’ began to operate independently due to the fact that Trinity could not supply adequate doctors to oversee it effectively and in 1692, the College was rechartered as the King and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland, an autonomous institution.
Photo of John Stearne from Wikipedia.com
In the early 1700s, Trinity College acknowledged that pre-clinical medical education in the institution was underdeveloped and unfit for purpose. In 1710, the college board approved the construction of the “Elaboratory” west of college park, on the site of today’s Eavan Boland Library. It also approved the creation of lectureships in Anatomy, Chymistry and Botany. Thomas Burgh, the same architect who designed the Long Room Library was commissioned to design the building which contained a lecture theatre, a dissecting room, a museum and a chemical laboratory. It opened on the 11th of August 1711.
The image on the right shows the Long Room Librayr and the Elaboratory, both deisgned by Thomas Burgh.
Sir Patrick Dun was another instrumental figure in the early years of medical education in Trinity. In 1713, as then-president of the Royal College of Physicians, Dun while still alive arranged a bequest of his income to fund professorships of physic in Trinity and to support the development of anatomy teaching. Dun died in 1713 and in order to carry out his bequest a royal charter was sought and granted in 1715. This formally established the School of Phsyic of Ireland, which was operating unofficially since 1711, to be jointly governed by TCD, RCPI and the Archbishop of Dublin.
The image on the right shows Sir Patrick Dun and this image was obtained from Wikipedia.com
In 1825, a new forman for the development of medical education in Trinity College emerged. Professor of Anatomy, James Maccartney, as seen on the left, was an advocate for new facilities in the School of Phsyic. Following his lobbying, the college built a new Anatomy House on the old bowling green in College Park. The building was designed by his son Joseph Macartney and it included a large dissection hall, a lecture theatre, an anatomical museum and private preparation and study rooms. The anatomical museum showcased Macartney’s personal specimen collection, making Trinity’s museum one of the finest in the UK and Ireland. However, after a falling out with the university over administration and funding, Macartney left the University and went to Cambridge, taking his collection with him.
The building above is located along the yellow line on the modern day Trinity campus map as shown on the right.
By the mid nineteenth century, the medical school in Trinity had outgrown even the facilities built just 40 odd years previously in 1825. In 1864 a new medical school block, including larger lecture halls, dedicated dissection and anatomy rooms, expanded museum and specimen spaces and modernised facilities, reflecting advances in physiology, pathology and surgery. These 1864 buildings still stand and are now home to the Chemistry Department, the Old Anatomy Museum and the Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre. This building is located along the blue line in the above image of the modern day Trinity College map.
In 1950, the construction of the Moyne Institute of Preventive Medicine began, funded by Grania Guinness, Marchioness of Normandy, in memory of her father Baron Moyne. It functions as a medical research institute on campus and opened in 1953.
In 1994, the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences at St. James’s Hospital, providing accommodation for academic departments, such as the Department of Pharmacology, and the John Stearne Medical Library opened. The year 2000 saw the completion of the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences at Tallaght University Hospital and finally in 2011, the Trinity Biomedical Science Institute opened which currently houses the School of Medicine in Trinity College.
