medical schools

medical schools. A large number of different institutions have offered medical education in Ireland since 1600. Medicine was, in theory, taught at Trinity College, Dublin, from at least the early 17th century, but not until 1711 was a purpose‐built medical school opened and then students appear to have been few. Only with the appointment of Dr James Macartney (1770–1843) as a professor in 1813 did the Trinity College medical school become a major teaching establishment.

Dissatisfied with teaching at Trinity, Sir Patrick Dun (1642–1713), a noted Dublin physician, left money in his will to endow a professorship in the College of Physicians. This became three professorships in 1747, but not until the opening of Dun's hospital in 1816 was the college able to conduct adequate clinical teaching. In 1785 the newly established College of Surgeons appointed professors and instituted training in anatomy and surgery.

For most of the 19th century a variety of private medical schools also flourished in Dublin, operated by noted doctors. Such schools, particularly prior to the 1830s, offered a great deal of work to the large Dublin community of resurrection men or grave robbers.

Cork and Belfast also had private schools, but these were superseded in 1849 with the opening of medical schools in the new Queen's Colleges. The Catholic University had its own medical school. This was the Cecilia Street School, which flourished between 1855 and 1931, when it was absorbed by University College, Dublin.

Elizabeth Malcolm