Physicians' Gallery

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this episode we explore the history of public health, including the impact of unclean water, food shortages, marshy land and slaughter houses. We then speak to Professor Mahmood Adil who has 25 years of experience working in public health in the NHS and the United States. And, to finish off, we look at one of the mo...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this episode we explore the history of renal medicine, examining how difficult it was to uncover what was happening inside the body before medical advances in the 1800s. Theories around how the kidney worked, and what to do when it failed, are uncovered – alongside some very strange attempts at treatment. We also ta...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this episode we explore the history of genito-urinary complaints, including the difficulty of correctly distinguishing between venereal diseases and urinary ones. We’ll uncover how, particularly in the 1700s and 1800s, suspicion abounded and women especially were judged for their moral character when diagnoses were...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this fortnight’s episode we uncover the history of geriatric medicine, including the use of workhouses and asylums to house the elderly. We also explore medical theories on old age – from the 1600s to the present day, via the discovery of Parkinson’s Disease and an allegedly 169 year old man. We also talk to Dr Mart...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this fortnight’s episode we explore the past and present of rheumatology. Dubious diagnoses, a bit of class prejudice and sexism and 18th century occupational health are all in here. Then we talk to Professor Frances Williams about her experiences working as a consultant rheumatologist. And, to finish off, we explor...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this episode we delve into the history of palliative care, starting with Carl Marx (with a C, not a K – so not that Karl Marx). Exploring the history of euthanasia and hospices – right up to the 1970s. We also talk to Dr Jeena Ackroyd, a Consultant in Palliative Medicine, about her experiences and insights into her...

Casenotes Past & Present is a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh podcast. In this episode we uncover the history of diabetes and its treatment, starting with Ancient Egypt and Greece and some very dubious therapeutics, including opium, alcohol and animal dung! Then we talk to Professor Mark Strachan, a consultant physician in endocrinology and diabetes, about his clinical and research work....

In this talk Prof Michael Cholbi explores the medical and emotional understanding of grief in times of global pandemic. Many experts have started to refer to the onslaught of grief unleashed in the pandemic in medical or epidemiological terms: as a “grief pandemic.” This way of characterizing the large scale grief wrought by the pandemic is troubling, villainising grief as an unhealthy or patholog...

In this episode of Casenotes Glasgow-based artist Ally Zlatar explores her works which contain examinations of the un-well body, including her own experiences with eating disorders. Her art focuses on how her thoughts and experiences of her eating disorder can contribute to wider conversations about the illness. This podcast celebrates the launch of our free public exhibition FOOD: Recipe or Remed...

In this episode of Casenotes Charlotte Holmes uncovers the history of medical recipes and the historical relationship between food and medicine. This podcast celebrates the launch of our free public exhibition FOOD: Recipe or Remedy. Find out more on our website https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/food-recipe-or-remedy Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/ Faceb...

This lecture explores botany and medicine in Edinburgh since 16th century, uncovering stories of doctors growing medicinal plants in dangerous times, pioneering women botanists, and what not to eat. Using the College’s beautiful books, the lecture tells the turbulent life story of the College’s botanist founder, recounts Edinburgh’s part in a Georgian rhubarb craze, and warns of the more recent da...

The Edinburgh physician and Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr Thomas Brown (1778-1820), is little known today, and his grave lies in disrepair. In his time, however, he was one of the most popular and celebrated British philosophers. In this talk, Professor Thomas Dixon, explains why he considers Brown to have been the “inventor of the emotions”, through the influence of his Lectures on the Philos...

Curators of the history of medicine are now facing one of the greatest challenges of their careers – how to collect and preserve objects that convey the impacts of COVID-19 on science, medicine and wider society, whilst that same pandemic rages around them. But in such a rapidly changing situation, might looking back help us in going forward? The Science Museum’s galleries and stores are rich in m...

In this lecture Dr Maureen Park uses the archive of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital to examine the reasons why, and the extent to which, drawing was promoted as a ‘therapeutic’ activity in the hospital. The lecture discusses the surviving drawings produced by patients such as William Bartholomew, John Myles and John Willis Mason at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, and locates their productivity within t...

What exactly is the placebo effect? How does it work? How do doctors decide whether a treatment is actually effective? What is ‘good’ medicine and how do you test for it? In this lecture Iain Milne discusses some key figures from the history of medicine and clinical trials, including James Lind, pioneer of naval hygiene, whose medical trials were thought to have discovered a cure for scurvy. Twitt...

We are all suffering an acute case of prostrate angst. Men worry about their own prostates and those of others close to them; women worry about the prostates of the men they love. The prostate—a gland located directly under the bladder—lurks on the periphery of many men’s health issues, but as an object of anxiety it goes beyond the medical, affecting how we understand masculinity, ageing, and sex...

In this talk, Dr Stephanie Allen examines an element of female sexual fraud; counterfeit maidenheads. She discusses the methods authors imagined women to use, including herbal concoctions, animals blood and leeches. Dr Allen also discusses how false virgins were presented within medical texts, popular works and literature, as by using a combination of sources we can begin to understand the fears o...

In conversation with Dr Jivitesh Vashisht (IASH, Edinburgh), Gavin Francis discusses his experiences in Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic arrived in our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global dis...

In 1845 the new Scottish Poor Law established a funded medical service for the registered poor. By 1852 the Physicians’ Enquiry concluded that medical provision in the Highlands of Scotland was still seriously inadequate. In this talk Dr Patricia Whatley discusses the changing issues relating to the work of the general practitioner in the second half of the nineteenth century in the remote and iso...

Charlotte Holmes (University of Edinburgh) examines the history of early recipe books and their use to treat a wide range of complaints, including festive maladies such as hangovers and over indulging. Where treatments can include bat blood and stale urine – this is definitely not one to try at home! Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/ Facebook: facebook.c...

Anatomy and surgery have strong extra-textual elements. The development and transmission of these crafts rely heavily on visual communication in a range of media, whether by practitioners or (other) illustrators. Some artists are justifiably renowned (eg Jan van Rymsdyk in the 18th century), some not as famous as they deserve (eg Joseph Towne and Henry Vandyke Carter in the Victorian era), and som...

When the first medical photographs were taken in 1840, the camera was presented as a revolution to medical education, psychiatry and pathology. Gradually, however, two things became apparent: medical photographs alienated the subject and they were, quite frankly, ugly. The concern with aesthetics and the relationship between the body and the patient would combine to shape the future of medical pho...

Join authors Ambrose Parry (Dr Marisa Haetzman & Chris Brookmyre) to discuss their new historical novel of medicine & murder, The Art of Dying. Set in the household of Dr James Young Simpson, The Art of Dying is a gripping dive into Victorian Edinburgh, a time of medical marvels, vicious rivalries, enlightenment and squalor. Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgall...

Tuberculosis: a contagious, infectious disease that has been a challenge over much of human history. In this talk, Dr Derek Sloan, who has worked in both high and low-income countries, accruing extensive experience in the management of infectious diseases, considers why tuberculosis still remains a threat and what can be done to combat this disease. Speaker: Dr Derek Sloan, Senior Lecturer/Consult...

This paper is a historical study and analysis of the events surrounding the emergence of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), an integrated care pathway for dying patients, developed in the late 1990s. This paper will describe the historical background and the themes within the history of hospices and the specialty of palliative medicine which frame the specialty’s self-understanding. Dr Paul Keeley,...