Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital

Having finished cataloguing the papers of Sir Dominic Corrigan I've now moved onto cataloguing a new collection, the papers of Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Dublin. Sir Patrick Dun (1642-1712) was a prominent physician in Ireland and one of the leading early fellows and presidents of the College of Physicians. Under his Will Dun left provision for the endowment of a professor of physic in the College, although disputes over the Will meant that the professorship, and an additional two others, were not founded until 1740. Several attempts were made during the second half of the eighteenth century to establish a teaching hospital in Dublin, but the proposal was controversial. It was not until 1800 that one of the last bills passed by the Irish Parliament, the School of Physic Act, regulated for the establishment of a teaching hospital using some of the funds from Dun's Will.

The Commissioners appointed under the Act selected a site on Artichoke Road, now Grand Canal Street, and the first wing of the hospital was ready to receive patients in 1809, although the whole building was not completed until 1816. Dun's Hospital was a teaching hospital and the medical professors appointed under Dun's Will were required to lecture there, and would include some of the leading Irish medical men of their times included Robert Graves, Thomas Gillman Moorhead, Fleetwood Churchill and Acquilla Smith. The hospital remained an important teaching centre for Trinity College Dublin until its closure in 1987 when the staff and patients were transferred to Saint James' Hospital. Funds from the sale of the building went to the Royal College of Physicians to develop post-graduate medical education, to build new a new teaching centre for Trinity College and research laboratories, both at Saint James'. The hospital's archive was donated to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. The archive covers the entire history of the hospital from 1800-1987, and contains a mixture of administrative papers and patient records.