Foundation of Faculty of Medicine, 1726
The Faculty of Medicine of Edinburgh University was founded in 1726.
In February 1726, four Edinburgh doctors John Rutherford (1695–1779), Andrew Sinclair (c1698-1760), Andrew Plummer (1697-1756), and John Innes (1696-1733) presented a petition to the Town Council, requesting that they 'institute the Profession of Medicine' at Edinburgh University and appoint the petitioners to teach the subject. The Town Council replied that such a step would be of great advantage to the university, city, and country. They therefore appointed Sinclair and Rutherford as Professors of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Plummer and Innes as Professors of Medicine Chemistry. They were granted full power not only to teach medicine 'in all its powers' but to examine and confer degrees upon students. The appointments
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— to examine candidates, and to do every other thing requisite and necessary to the graduation of doctors of medicine." They conferred these appointments ad vitam aut culpam ; but they were to be unaccom- panied by any salary out of the City's revenues.
This Act of 1726 not only established the Medical Faculty of the University by creating four Professorships in Medicine, in addition to the Chair of Anatomy already existing, but it also for the first time recognised on the part of the Town Council
1 Craufurd, who in 17 13 had been appointed " Professor of Chemis- try in the University of Edinburgh," must now have either deceased, or else have voluntarily discontinued his occasional courses of lectures (see above, p. 297).
314 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1726.
the right of the Principal and Professors to " deliber- ate and vote on the affairs of general concern to the College.' ' Of course the practice of so deliberating and voting had long existed, but it had never been recognised, and on one occasion, at least, the right had been formally denied (see above, pp. 240-246). But now the Council, being in a more reasonable frame of mind, recognised the practice, and proceeded to regulate it by ordaining that of the four new Professors '• two only 1 shall at one time have the privilege of voting with the other Professors in College affairs." They were to enjoy this privilege in alternate years ; first, one Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and one Professor of Medicine and Chemistry were to be privileged for a year to deliberate and vote, and then for the next year they were to be disfranchised, and the other pair were to come in. The term " Senatus Academi- cus " is never used in the Act, but the existence of such a body is clearly implied by its provisions. And, as if acting on the encouragement which they had received, the Principal and Professors met in the sub- sequent October as a Senatus Academicus, and having recognised the five Medical Professors as a Medical Faculty, entered them as such in their minutes.
The Town Council had not exactly defined the provinces of the four Professors whom they appointed ; it appears, however, that while Dr.
1 The reason for limiting the new Medical votes in the College Councils is not known. Perhaps the Arts Professors may have made a representation on the subject. The restriction was removed by an Act of the Town Council on the 26th February 1729.
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1726.] CHAIR OF MIDWIFERY FOUNDED. .'31$
Plummer lectured on Chemistry, or rather Chemi- cal Pharmacy, Dr. Innes ignored the term " Chem- istry" in his commission, and simply taught the Practice of Physic conjointly with Dr. Rutherford, who lectured on Boerhaave's Aphorismi de Cogno- scendis et Curandis Morbis. Dr. Sinclair, who had chosen the Institutes of Theory of Medicine as his province, took the Instttuttones Medicce of the same author for his text-book. There was no longer any dilettanteAsvcL about the Medical Professorships in the College; systematic courses were henceforth delivered, though for a time there was a want of originality about them, as they were entirely a re- production of the system of Boerhaave. 1
On the same day (9thJFebruary 1726) on which the Town Council added four new Professors to the staff of the College they also proceeded to appoint a Professor of Midwifery, not, however, for the College, but for the City. It was hardly contem- plated in those days that Medical Students should go through a course of obstetrics, the whole practice and profession of which was then left to females. But one Mr. Joseph Gibson, a Surgeon of Edin- burgh, had outstepped his era, and had for some time practised this important art in the town of Leith, and, supported by the recommendations of members of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, he now applied to the Town Council to create him a Pro-
1 The notices in the Scots Magazine of the courses of lectures in the University of Edinburgh for 1741 do not contain any particulars as to the teaching of the Medical Professors beyond what is above given.
316 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1739-
fessor, which they did, nominating him " Professor of Midwifery in this City and privileges," with power to him " to profess and teach the said art, in as large an extent as it is taught in any city or place where this profession is already instituted." And with this appointment they joined a system of rules for the regulation of the practice of Midwifery in Edinburgh. Here again we have an instance of a branch of study elevated into a Professorship owing to suggestions from without. As Bower says: "This institution, like every other connected with the history of Medicine in Edinburgh, originated with the colleges of Physi- cians and Surgeons." At first, as in other cases, the Professorship of Midwifery was general and un- attached, but subsequently it was incorporated into the University. On the death of Gibson in 1739 he was succeeded by Mr. Robert Smith, who re- ceived a commission appointing him " Professor of Midwifery in this City's College," "with the same privileges and immunities which the other Professors in the said College do enjoy, or that are known to appertain to a Professor of Midwifery in any other well regulated city or place." 1
The next great step in the progress of the Medi-
1 The researches of Professor A. R. Simpson (see his Introductory Lecture on the History of the Chair of Midwifery, etc., Edinburgh, 1883, pp. 9, 10), lead to the conclusion that Joseph Gibson was the first person who ever received the title of " Professor of Midwifery." Professor Simpson says that none of the title-pages of the obstetric treatises prior to 1726 indicate that the authors had that title. And he refers to Killian's Geburtslehre, p. 23, for the fact that the University of Strasburg was the first on the Continent to have a Professorship of Midwifery, dating from 1728, i.e. two years after Gibson had received
1746.] CLINI CAL TEACHIN G ESTABLISHED. 3*7
cal School of the University was made in 1746, when George Drummond, after an interval of twenty years, returned to office as Lord Provost, in the autumn succeeding the battle of Culloden. The Royal Infirmary, his creation, had then been opened, and one of the first acts of his administration was to institute clinical lectures in the Infirmary. The Managers, by his advice, permitted all Students of Medicine, upon paying a small gratuity, to attend the hospital. Dr. Rutherford, as Professor of the Practice of Physic, commenced delivering clinical lectures in the winter session of 1746-47, and was immediately attended by a large number of Students. Rutherford's clinical courses were continued over twenty years, and he thus solidly inaugurated that practical instruction in Medicine for which the Uni- versity of Edinburgh has been distinguished.
We have seen that in 1 726 the Senatus Academi- cus recognised five Professors as constituting the Medical Faculty, namely, those of Anatomy, Insti- tutes of Medicine, Practice of Physic, and two joint Professors of Medicine and Chemistry. The next expansion in the Faculty took place in the province of Botany. The Town Council, so long back as 1676, had given the title of " Professor of Botany in the Town's College " to Mr. Sutherland, Keeper of the Physic Garden. But this was an outside and quasi -honorary Professorship, and no systematic
his appointment in Edinburgh. The Town Council then, in speaking of " other cities and places where this profession is instituted," were unconscious that they were doing something original, and were not following, but founding, a precedent.
318 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1761.
teaching in Botany seems to have been given, either by Sutherland or by his two successors in the appointment, Charles and George Preston. At last Dr. Charles Alston appeared on the scene ; he had devoted his life to the study of Botany, and had especi- ally imbued himself at Leyden with the ideas of Boerhaave on this science. On returning to Edin- burgh about the year 1720, aged thirty-seven, he seems to have got the sinecure office of King's Botanist in connection with the gardens of Holy rood, and to have begun giving some lectures. Eighteen years later, in the year 1738, George Preston died, and the Town Council, "considering that were a Pro- fessor of Medicine and Botany elected and installed in the City's College, it would in a great measure contribute to the advancement of learning, etc. ; they therefore appoint Dr. Charles Alston, etc." And this vigorous man, commencing when he was fifty- five years old, delivered two courses of lectures annually for the next twenty-two years — one on Botany and one on Materia Medica. And so the teaching of these two subjects got regularly estab- lished in the University.
What had been thus begun was diligently carried forward by Dr. John Hope, who in 1761 was appointed by the Town Council " Professor of Botany and Materia Medica." Like his predecessor, he gave an annual course in each of these subjects, and he laboured indefatigably in introducing the Linnaean system into Scotland. But subdivision and specialisation of science was required in order
1768-70.] ADDITIONAL CHAIRS FOUNDED. 319
to give the Medical School of the University its complete organisation. In 1768 Dr. Hope received a commission from the King as Regius Professor of Botany, and he then appears to have recommended to the patrons that the province of Materia Medica should be separated from his Chair and entrusted to other hands. Accordingly Dr. Francis Home, who was well qualified by study and experience at home and abroad for this charge, was appointed to a separ- ate Professorship of Materia Medica, which he worthily inaugurated during a period of thirty years.
In addition to the existing Chair of Anatomy, an Act of the Town Council of Edinburgh created two professorships of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and two professorships of Medicine and Chemistry. It further granted the university the power to instruct and to examine for itself candidates for the degree of medicine.