Chronicle of Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland launched by Dr Mary McAleese

The “roller-coaster history” of the Royal Collage of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) is captured in a new book about the university, the former President, Dr Mary McAleese, said in Dublin on Tuesday.

Founded in a tavern in 1784 when a small group of Irish surgeons broke ranks with the Guild of Barber-Surgeons, the RCSI has gone on to play a pre-eminent role as an educational, professional, surgical and medical institution, right in the heart of Dublin but “with a reach and a reputation right across the globe,” she said.

Dr McAleese was launching ‘Every branch of Healing Art’, by Dr Ronan Kelly, author and archivist in the RCSI Library’s Heritage Collections. In 2011 Dr McAleese was awarded the RCSI’s first-ever honorary degree after the RCSI was given independent degree-awarding status.

Referring to a quote in the book from one member of the RCSI who dismissed dentists as “technicians with a sadistic bent”, Dr McAleese said that as a “wife, mother and sister of a bunch of dentists” the quote struck her as “absolutely true, maybe a tad harsh, but unfortunately true.”

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Readers of Dr Kelly’s book, she said, might be bemused to find out about the connection between Napoleon and war and the financing of the RCSI, at a time when surgeons were needed to “mend the wounded and attended to the dying” because of the wars of the time.

“How we wish that the world had left those wars behind,” she said. “Our wards are still filled today by the work that is made for nurses and surgeons and medical staff, the damage that medics are left to deal with and to heal.”

There was no end of farce, humanity and genius in the pages of what she said was a “wonderful” book that dealt with such issues as “the lucrative trade in grave robbing” but also the role played by the RCSI in the championing of secularism and the early admission of women.

The book, she said, told the story of how RSCI had gone from being a national institution to an “internationalist hub of inclusion and diversity” and would help today’s and future generations understand the impact the RCSI has had on Ireland and the world.