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.
THE ROYAL INFIRMARY. 299 h6rmary Street]
students to witness surgical operations. The Infirmary
has separate wards for male and female
patients, and a ward which is used as a Lock
hospital ; but even in ordinary periods the building
had become utterly incompetent for the service
of Edinburgh, and during the prevalence of an epidemic
afforded but a mere fraction of the required
accommodation, and hence the erection of its magnificent
successor, to which we shall refer elsewhere.
The Earl of Hopetoun, in 1742, and for the last
twenty-five years of his life, generously contributed
A400 per annum to the institution when it was
young and struggling. In 1750 Dr. Archibald Kerr
of Jamaica bequeathed to it an estate worth
E218 11s. 5d. yearly; and five years afterwards
the Treasury made it a gift of jG8,ooo j yet it has
never met with the support from Government. that
it ought to have done, and which similar institutions
in London receive.
But the institution owed most of its brilliant
success to Lord Provost Drummond. Among his
associates in this good work he had the honoured
members of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons
in Edinburgh, ever first in all works of goodness and
charity; and the first Dr. Munro, Professor of
Anatomy, was singularly sanguine of the complete
success of the undertaking.
That portion of the house which was founded by
the Earl of Cromarty was opened for the reception
of patients in December, 1741. The theatre described
was made to serve the purposes also of a
chapel, and twelve cells on the ground floor, for cases
of delirium fremens, being found unnecessary, were
converted into kitchens and larders, &c. The
grounds around the house, consisting of two acres,
and long bounded on- the south by the city wall,
were laid out into grass walks for the convalescents,
and ultimately the house was amply supplied with
water from the city reservoir.
In the years 1743-4 the sick soldiers of the
regiments quartered in the Castle were accommodated
in the Infirmary; and in the stormy
period of the '45 it was of necessity converted into
a great military hospital for the sick and wounded
troops of both armies engaged at Prestonpans and
elsewhere ; and in I 748 the surgeon-apothecaries,
who since 1729 had given all manner of medical
aid gratis, were feed for the first time. Wounded
from our armies in Flanders have been sent there
for treatment.
In 1748, after paying for the site, building,
furniture, &c., the stock of the institution amounted
to &5,00o; and sick patients not wishing to be resident
were invited to apply for advice on Mondays
and Fridays, and were in cases of necessity
admitted as supernumeraries at the rate of 6d. per
day. About this time there was handed over an
Invalid Grant made by Government to the city,
on consideration of sixty beds being retained for
the use of all soldiers who paid 4d. per diem for
accommodation, This sum, &3, 2 70, was fully made
over to the managers, who, for some time afteqfound
themselves called upon to entertain so many military
patients, that a guard had to be mounted on
the house to enforce order; and liberty was obtained
to deposit all dead patients in Lady Yester's
churchyard, on the opposite side of the street.
Hitherto the physicians had, with exemplary
fidelity, attended the patients in rotation j but in
January, 1751, the managers on being empowered
by the general court of contributors, selected Dr.
David Clerk and Dr, Colin Drummond, physicians
in ordinary, paying them the small honorarium of
;E30 annually.
The University made offer to continue its
services, together with those of the ordinary physicians,
which offer was gladly accepted; and
though the practice fell into disuse, they were long
continued in monthly rotation. To the option of
the two ordinary physicians was left the visiting
of the patients conjointly, or by each taking his
own department. "It was their duty to sign the
tickets of admission and dismission. In case of any
unforeseen occurrences or dangerous distemper, the
matron or clerks were permitted to use this authe
rity ; the physicians en their amval, however, were
expected to append their signatures to the tickets.
The good and economy of the house from the first,
induced the managers to appoint two of their
number to visit the institution once every month,
who were enjoined to inquire how far the patients
were contented with their treatment, and to note
what they found inconsistent with the ordinary
regulations : their remarks to be entered in a book
of reports, to come under review at the first meeting
of managers." (" Journal of Antiq.," VoL 11.)
In 1754 some abuses prevailed in the mode of
dispensing medicines to the out-door patients,
detrimental to the finances ; an order was given for
a more judicious and sparing distribution. In the
following pear application was made to the Town
Council, as well as to the Presbytery of the Church,
to raise money at their several churches to provide
a ward for sick servants-which had been found
one of the most useful in the house. From its
first institution the ministers of the city had, in
monthly rotation, conducted the religious services ;
but in the middle of 1756 the managers appointed
aregular chaplain, whose duty it was to preach
every Monday in the theatre for surgical operations.
