298 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Infirmary Street.
In that year a fishing company was dissolved,
and the partners were pcevailed upon to assign part
of their stock to promote this benevolent institution,
which the state of the poor in Edinburgh rendered
so necessary, as hitherto the members of the Royal
College of Physicians had given both medicines
and advice to them gratis.
A subscription for the purpose was at the same
time urged, and application made to the General
Assembly to recommend a subscription in all the
parishes under its jurisdiction ; but Arnot records,
to the disgrace of the clergy of that day, that ?ten
out of eleven utterly disregatded it.?
Aid came in from lay purses, and at the second
meeting of contributors, the managers were elected,
the rules of procedure adjusted, and in 1729, on
the 6th of August, the Royal Infirmary-ohe of
the grandest and noblest institutions in the British
Isles, was opened, but in a very humble fashionin
a small house hired for the sick poor, hear the
old University-a fact duly recorded in the
Month0 Cirronicle of that year, on the 18th of
the month. This edifice had been formerlyused
by Dr. Black, Professor of Chemistry, as the place
for delivering his lectures, says Kincaid, but this
must have been before his succession to the chair.
It was pulled down when the South Bridge was
built. Six physicians and surgeons undertook to
give, as before, medicines and attendance gratis ;
and the total number of patients received in the
first year amounted to only thirty-five, of whom
nineteen were dismissed as cured. The six physicians,
whose names deserve to be recorded with
honour, were John &?Gill, Francis Congalton,
George Cunninghame, Robert Hope, Alexander
Munro, and John Douglas. Such was the origin
of the Edinburgh Infirmary, which, small as it was
at first, was designed from its very origin as a
benefit to the whole kingdom, no one then dreaming
that a time would come when every considerable . county town would have a similar hospital.?
In the year 1736, by a royal charter granted by
George II., at Kensington palace, on the 25th of
August, the contributors were incorporated, and
they proposed to rear a building calculated to accommodate
1,700 patients per annum, allowing six
weeks? residence for each at an average ; and after a
careful consideration of plans a commencement was
made with the east wing of the present edifice, the
foundation-stone of which was laid on the 2nd of
August, 1738, by George Mackenzie, the gallant
Earl of Cromarty, who was then Grand Master
Mason of Scotland, and was afterwards attainted
for leading 400 of his clan at the battle of Falkirk.
The Royal College of Physicians attended as a
body on this occasion, and voted thirty guineas
towards the new Infirmary.
This portion of the building was, till lately,
called the Medical House. Supplies of money were
promptly rendered. The General Assembly-with a
little better success-again ordered collections to
be made, and the Established clergy were now probably
spurred on by the zeal of the Episcopalians,
who contributed to the best of their means; so
did various other public bodies and associations.
Noblemen and gentlemen of the highest position,
merchants, artisans, farmers, carters-all subscribed
substantially. Even the most humble in the ranks
of the industrious, who could not otherwise aid the
noble undertaking, gave their personal services at
the building for several days gratuitously.
A
Newcastle glass-making company glazed the whole
house gratis ; and by personal correspondence
money was obtained, not only from England and
Ireland, but from other parts of Europe, and even
from America, as Maitland records ; but this would
be, of course, from Scottish colonists or exiles.
So the work of progression went steadily on,
until the present great quadrangular edifice on the
south side of Infirmary Street was complete. It -
consists of a body and two projecting wings, all
four storeys in height. The body is 210 feet long,
and in its central part is thirty-six feet wide ; in the
end portions, twenty-four. Each wing is seventy
feet long, and twenty-four wide. The central portion
of the edifice is ornate in its architecture,
having a range of Ionic columns surmounted by a
Palladiau cornice, bearing aloft a coved roof and
cupola. Between the columns are two tablets
having the inscriptions, ?1 was naked and ye
clothed me ;? I was sick and ye visited me ;?
and between these, in a recess, is, curiously enough,
a statue of George 11. in a Roman costume, carved
in London.
The access to the different floors is by a large
staircase in the centre of the building, so spacious
as to admit the transit of sedan chairs, and by two
smaller staircases at each end. The floors are
portioned out into wards fitted up with beds for the
patients, and there are smaller rooms for nurses
and medical attendants, with others for the manager,
for consultations, and students waiting.
Two of the wards devoted to patients whose
cases are deemed either remarkable or instructive,
are set apart for clinical lectures attended by
students of medicine, and delivered by the professors
of clinical surgery in the adjacent University.
Within the attic in the centre of the building is a
spacious theatre, capable of holding above 200
Many joiners gave sashes to the windows.
