Of Napoleon’s Toothbrush and Other Matters

One of the oldest institutions in this country, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland dates back to 1654, although its first royal charter was granted by Charles II in 1667. The man behind this initiative was John Stearne who, like many other characters during this period, was able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and thereby survive and even flourish. Born in County Meath in 1624, Stearne had attended Trinity College Dublin and became a scholar there, but left without taking a degree around the onset of the Confederate Wars in 1641, when he moved to England. There he spent time first in Cambridge and then Oxford, returning to Ireland a decade after he had left it and becoming a fellow of Trinity College Dublin. The university had been given a dilapidated building on nearby Dame Street by the city’s corporation but lacked funds to restore it: In 1654 Stearne persuaded college authorities to hand the property over to him, on the understanding that he would convert it ‘unto the sole and proper use of physicians’ where he would act as life president. It says much about his persuasive charm that Stearne’s proposal should have been accepted, that he then managed to secure donations for the building’s refurbishment before riding, seemingly without problems, over the transition from Commonwealth to Restoration, and then ensure that the organisation he had established should receive royal approbation. Two years after this was achieved, Stearne died just days before his 45 birthday (one wonders whether he was familiar with the maxim ‘physician heal thyself’). Happily, the college survived. Initially it was known as the Fraternity of Physicians of Trinity Hall, but after receiving a second royal charter from William III and Mary II in 1692 , it was renamed the King and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland, retaining this title until 1890 when the present title was formally adopted. Once the direct link with Trinity College was broken following the grant of a second charter, the physicians became homeless and this remained the case for more than the next century, meeting in the homes of successive Presidents. However, a hospital opened on Dublin’s Grand Canal Street funded by a substantial legacy the College of Physicians had received from Sir Patrick Dun following his death almost 100 years earlier in 1713. This hospital, named after Dun, included a meeting room and accommodation for the college’s library, but in the new hospital. Nevertheless, the physicians still wanted their own substantial premises, and this finally became possible in 1860 when the Kildare Street Club, which had occupied a couple of houses on Kildare Street since the 1780s, offered to sell these buildings to the College.

Just four months after taking possession of its new home, the college suffered a setback when the Kildare Street buildings were almost entirely destroyed by fire. Fortunately, the property was insured and this meant that the physicians, instead of having to spend money adapting what had once been two private residences into a public institution could instead start afresh with a building designed for their specific purposes. Six architects were invited to submit proposals, the winner of the commission being William G Murray, whose practice was responsible for many banks, insurance companies, railway stations and so forth. While the facade of the college underwent some modifications when the original sandstone was replaced by Portland stone in 1964, inside remains much as it looked when first completed in 1864, Professor Christine Casey noting that today the building’s sequence of rooms ‘is among the best-preserved Victorian interiors in the city.’ A flight of steps in the vestibule leads to the top-lit, double-height stair hall with grand imperial staircase: this space introduces visitors to a long processional axis running like a spine through the centre of the building. At the top of the staircase and occupying the entire street frontage is the library, originally conceived as two spaces, a library and a museum, but now one room lit by five windows. Meanwhile, down off the central landing, a long colonnaded corridor leads to the first of two great meeting rooms, the Graves Hall. This was part of Murray’s original design, a double-height space lwith ribbed coved ceiling, the walls of which are lined with Corinthian pilasters between which hang a collection of portraits on the west wall and twin light windows on the east. At the north and south ends and flanking the chimneypieces are white marble statues on plinths: these represent four former presidents of the college, including Sir Dominic Corrigan who was responsible for negotiating the purchase of the site and the fund-raising required after the fire. Corrigan can also be given the credit for a further extension to the building, this time designed by McCurdy Mitchell in 1873. This area at the rear of the old houses had previously been filled by the Kildare Street Club with a racquet court and other rooms. Another long barrell-vaulted and colonnade corridor now led to the second great hall, today named after Corrigan, its walls lined with a further collection of portraits.

The RCPI is home to many extraordinary objects. The library, for example, contains over 20,000 books, pamphlets and journals, primarily but not exclusively focussed on medicine, including Sir Patrick Dun’s own library, bequeathed to the college in 1713. Likewise many of the portraits, busts and statues represent doctors and physicians, but not all of them. There are medical instruments dating back to the 18th century and later. Then there is the extraordinary Quin Tassie collection, consisting of 26 drawers of more than 1,700 miniature gem casts and moulds imitating antique models and believed to have been created in the 18th century by the internationally renowned Scottish gem engraver James Tassie working with his mentor and patron, Irish physician Henry Quin; it was donated by his family to the college in 1926. Finally, and perhaps most extraordinary of all the items held by the college, is Napoleon Bonaparte’s toothbrush. As is well known, when the former emperor was exiled to the island of St Helena, he was attended by an Irish doctor, Barry O’Meara. He had served as a surgeon with the British Army in Egypt and Sicily, before being court-martialled for acting as a second in a duel in Sicily. O’Meara then entered the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, ending up in St Helena where, according to Napoleon in Exile: or, A Voice from St. Helena, a best-selling memoir he published in 1822 a year after the emperor’s death, O’Meara was bequeathed various mementoes, including the aforementioned toothbrush with a silver gilt handle stamped with the letter ‘N’. Today, it can be viewed, along with much else, in the Royal College of Physicians.