A Nineteenth Century Medical Education

Medical training in the nineteenth century was very different to today; aspiring doctors were not taught at one university but could attend classes at a variety of universities and private schools, before sitting their final exams at a university medical school of their choice. The archive collection of Dominic Corrigan, who trained as a doctor in the 1820s, gives a valuable insight into medical training at the time, as he preserved the admittance tickets and certificates from the various courses he attended during his medical training (DC/2/1).

Corrigan started his education at the Lay College at Maynooth, and it was there that he seems to have settled on a career in medicine. He was apprenticed to Dr Edward Talbot O’Kelly, physician and apothecary to Maynooth College. In 1818 he was awarded a certificate of apprenticeship by Apothecaries Hall. When Corrigan left Maynooth he had both a good general education, as well as a basic knowledge of medical practice, a decided advantage over many of his contemporaries.[1]

Corrigan spent five years from 1820 to 1825 studying medicine in Dublin and Edinburgh. From his surviving archive we can see that he took courses in Chemistry, Dissection, Anatomy, Physiology, Surgery, the Practice of Medicine, Pathology, Materia Medica, Pharmacy, Morbid Anatomy, the Institutes of Medicine, Clinical Lectures and finally Botany. In taking these courses Corrigan attended the University of Dublin and the School of Physic, Trinity College Dublin, as well as private medical schools; the Peter Street School, the Medical School in Ireland, Apothecaries Hall and Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, where he also spent a year on the wards. The collection also gives us the names of Corrigan’s teachers including the anatomists John Timothy Kirby and James Macartney, and John Crampton, professor of Materia Medica at the School of Physic, Trinity College.