History

The Heritage Centre of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland was established in its current form in 2010, it comprises the Dun’s Library, archive collections, heritage items collections and genealogical collections. Together these form one of the most important resources for the history of medicine and medical education in Ireland.

The aim of the Heritage Centre is to

‘bring together, safeguard and share the College’s unique history, and to inform and promote the history of medicine to the medical and academic communities, and the general public.’

Dun’s Library

The library of the Royal College of Physicians has existed for almost 300 years. The College minutes show that the Library owned books as early as 1710, but the true foundation of the library is considered to be the bequest of the large personal library of Sir Patrick Dun, one of most distinguished early presidents, in 1713. The College Library has had the official title Dun's Library ever since.

The College Library did not have a permanent home for over a hundred years after leaving Trinity in 1692. The library led a nomadic existence, passing between the homes of various presidents, with books being added but many more going missing. Not until 1815, with the opening of Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, which became the College's headquarters, did the Library find a permanent home.

The premises of the Kildare Street Club were purchased by the College in 1860 and, shortly afterwards, destroyed by fire. The College had a new building built to their own design, and this was open in 1864. The upper front room, stretching the full length of the building, was designed as the library and has remained so ever since. Its book cases, running the full length of the inner wall, were later augmented with an upper level, reached by an iron spiral staircase and galley. Extra shelving and bookcases have been added over the years in other rooms of the building to accommodate the ever-increasing number of books.

A comprehensive collection of all the major medical works from the early 16th Century onwards was built up and regularly added to until the 1960s when the College decided it was no longer feasible, both finically and practically, to purchase copies of all new medical publications. Since then the Library has been maintained as a medical-historical library, and is much used by those researching medical and social history at all levels.

The Archive

The College has had an archive, almost as long as it has existed. The earliest documents in the archive date to the foundation of the College in 1667. As with the library the constant movement of the College and its collections in the seventeenth and eighteenth century lead to some early material being lost. From the nineteenth century, once the College had found a more permanent home and had more space, the archive collections began to expand. The amount of material relating to the history of the College increased, and the College began to collect archives relating to the history of medicine more generally. Until 2010 the archive was seen as part of the library, which had lead to much of the material being overlooked. In 2010 the College received funding from the Wellcome Trust to catalogue, for the first time, the entire archival holdings. The resulting online catalogue can be found here



Heritage Items Collections

As with the archive the heritage items collections have been built up over time by the College, especially since the move to Number Six Kildare Street. The collections include portraits of former Presidents, furniture, silver and glassware. A number of items relating to the history of the College and the history of medicine in Ireland have also been donated to the College over time including medical instruments, awards and medals.

When the College first moved to Kildare Street in 1864 money and space was provided to equip the building with a museum of material medica specimens and other items. The museum no longer exists but there is a catalogue from the 1860s detailing what was held, and any surviving artefacts now form part of the Heritage Items Collections.

Genealogical Collections

The genealogical collections have been identified as a separate set of resources in response to the growing interest in family history research. The materials, taken from the library and archive collections, comprise a complete set of Medical Directories and Registers and the Kirkpatrick Index of Irish Doctors.