Sketch of the early history of the medical profession in Edinburgh : being an address delivered at a conversazione in the hall of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, on 22d January 1864 / by John Gairdner, M.D.

  • Gairdner, John, 1790-1876.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sketch of the early history of the medical profession in Edinburgh : being an address delivered at a conversazione in the hall of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, on 22d January 1864 / by John Gairdner, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/30 (page 17)
    payment in the following terms:— Item to ane fallow, because the king pullitfurth his twtht, xiiii s.1 I presume that the sum paid was for his majesty's professional education, which was there- fore conducted on sound, practical, common-sense principles. There are many indications that our Scotch physicians were in little repute among us for more than a century after James IV. Foreign physicians were generally preferred. John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, a man allied by blood to the royal family of Scotland, engaged in his service in 1547 a young French physician, whose name was Casanate; and, five years later, his health being still very bad, brought from Italy, at the suggestion ferring of medical degrees was then a new thing, and no more were conferred for six years after. Up to the reign of George II., the doctors created there do not average more than one annually. Daring his reign they average three^ and they were much more numerous afterwards. In Edinburgh University, the first M.D. was David Cockburn, A.M., who graduated on 14th May 1705. There were fifteen graduates in Medicine prior to 1726, the date of the creation of a medical faculty in the University. In some cases the degree was con- ferred ad eundem, in some by recommendation, and in absence, but in the greater number by examinations, which were conducted by the Eoyal College of Physicians—[See Dalzell's History of the University, vol. ii. pp. 293, 308, 312, 319, 325, 326, 327, 329, and 330; also, Eeport on the Examination of Medical Practitioners, etc., printed by the Royal College of Physicians, 1833, pp. 82-88.] The earliest doctors in Medicine who entered the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow were two who were admitted in January 1645. The first doctor in Medicine who entered the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Christopher Irvine, was admitted 28th December 1658. He is first termed Air,—a prefix which, in those times, indicated that he was Master of Arts, and which is invariably applied to him till 16th February 1669, when he is first called Doctor. But he had got his doctor's degree from some university long before, for his name appears in the published Catalogue of Graduates in Arts, etc. of the University of Edinburgh, as having taken the degree of A.M. on 15th April 1645, and he is there designated Medicinae Doctor. It is probable that the doctorate was in less esteem with the surgeons than the mastership in Arts; and that the attempt of the doctors in the year before he entered [see p. 20], may have caused them to give a preference to the title of M.A. over M.D. Dr James Nisbet was the only other doctor who entered with the Surgeons in the seventeenth century, but there were several graduates in Arts. [For the information and references contained in this note,—as to Aberdeen, I am indebted to Professor Struthers ; as to Glasgow, to Professor Weir, and to Dr Weir, Secretary to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons; and as to St Andrews, by much the oldest of our universities, to Dr Oswald H. Bell, Professor of Medicine there. There was some little inaccuracy as to Christopher Irvine in the edition of this note which appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for February 1864. This I have now corrected.] 1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. i. p. 124. Equal to Is. 2d. sterling money.