Dublin's medical schools : a biographical retrospect / [William Doolin].

  • William Doolin
Date:
1952
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dublin's medical schools : a biographical retrospect / [William Doolin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Elizabeth, from whom the Guild obtained its second charter (1557). Neither of these charters gives any intimation of the educational requirements for mastership. Although the publica- tion of Vesalius' De Fabrica (1543) had provided a tremendous impetus to the study of human anatomy on the Continent, and Caius had been reading the anatomy lessons to the Barbers Company in London for 20 years thereafter before venturing to introduce the subject at Cambridge, we find no allusion to its study in Ireland until the third charter granted to the Guild by James II (1687), wherein provision was made for readers in anatomy . The University of Dublin had been established by Elizabeth in 1591, but for the first century of its existence its chief function, in Provost Bedell's apologetic phrase, had been that of one poor Colledg of Divines. Van Helmont, therefore, was apparently justified in his commendation (1648) of the native Irish healer who lived with them [the people]—not one who had come back trained from the Universities, but one who could really make sick people well. Each such healer has a book crammed with specific remedies bequeathed to him by his forefathers. Her isolated position geographically and the all but continuous state of political warfare through the seventeenth century were largely responsible for the slow arrival of the fruits of the New Learning in Ireland. In the latter half of the century two remark- able men appeared to set their mark on Irish medical education. John Stearne, born in Co. Meath, had pursued his medical studies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Returning to Dublin in 1651, he speedily gave proof of his mettle during an epidemic of plague then raging in the city. In 1662 he was elected publiq professor of medicine in the University of Dublin for and during his naturall life . A man of great energy, he secured the first charter (1667) for the establishment of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, of which he was nominated the first President. He lived less than two years in office, dying in 1669 at the age of 45.