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  • "A Famous and Flourishing Society": The History of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 1505-2005
  • Christopher Lawrence
Helen M. Dingwall . "A Famous and Flourishing Society": The History of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 1505-2005. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. xxiii + 336 pp. Ill. $45.00 (0-7486-1567-9). (Distributed by Columbia University Press, 61 W. 62nd St., New York, NY 10023)

One could think that the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh was established in order to confound medical historians. The history of the hierarchy of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries that we routinely teach our students is refuted at every turn by this "flourishing society"—as a minute of the Incorporation, as it [End Page 770] was once termed, described itself in 1671 (p. 1). Compared to the surgeons, the physicians of Edinburgh were upstarts: their Royal College was founded in 1681, by which time the surgeons could consider themselves, corporately, one hundred and seventy-six years old. Nothing like the hauteur with which the members and fellows of the London Royal College of Physicians lorded it over their surgical brethren was ever as visible or acceptable in Edinburgh. The long and the short of the matter came down to money: Learning was highly valued on both sides of the border, but making a fat living as a physician in a country as poor as Scotland (especially after the union of the crowns in 1603) was well nigh impossible. In the west of Scotland physicians and surgeons had done the unthinkable and banded together for self-protection in a single faculty in Glasgow. In the days when the Edinburgh surgeons first unionized, there were never really enough physicians in town to form a legally recognized lobby.

To mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Edinburgh surgeons' headquarters, Helen Dingwall has written a celebratory history. Ironically, in spite of their tardiness in shaping their identity, the physicians have had, for thirty years, an equivalent volume: W. S. Craig's invaluable History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1976). Not surprisingly, Dingwall's history is organized chronologically. In spite of overtures to the importance of integrating the college's history into the history of Scotland generally, this is primarily an in-house history. And, indeed, it is when concentrating on college people and affairs that the work is at its best and most useful. There is a great deal of material collected here that will make the book essential for future Scottish studies.

The surgeons were incorporated during the reign of James IV—a broadly learned monarch, reputedly skilled in treating wounds. From the start, Dingwall concludes, Scottish surgeons were higher in the medical pecking order than their brethren elsewhere in early modern Europe. Not much evidence exists for the Incorporation's activities in the sixteenth century, although we know that its right to brew aqua vitae was affirmed in 1561. This was one of the many points in this book where I wanted it to have a more antiquarian flavor. What, for example, was meant by aqua vitae at this time? Or, why did the surgeons have a mortcloth (not indexed)? Was it to cover their mistakes? Where the minutes allow, Dingwall does present procedural matters in great detail, and it is quite clear that beyond regulating surgical practice, the Incorporation was an important institution for maintaining social order in Edinburgh at large in the seventeenth century. Dingwall suggests that its activities can be understood through its persistent drive to "be regarded as a learned society." (p. 3).

This judgment seems spot on. The recognition of the justice of the Incorporation's claim for greater respect can be seen in its conversion to a Royal College (chartered in 1778). Its aspirations to be regarded as learned are scarcely seen in the sale of its library, however ("Library, sale of," is not indexed). The Incorporation's means of pursuing its higher goals were intimately tied to its unique political situation. The college's representatives were an important presence on the Edinburgh town council, and, because of the tight-knit nature of Edinburgh society, the council exercised extensive patronage, notably in the case...

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