Eliza Maud "Elsie" Inglis was a Scottish medical doctor, surgeon, teacher, suffragist, and founder of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. She was the first woman to hold the Serbian Order of the White Eagle.
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher, and feminist. She led the campaign to secure women access to a university education, when six other women and she, collectively known as the Edinburgh Seven, began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the wider United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; a leading campaigner for medical education for women, she was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were training women.
Sir Robert Christison, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish toxicologist and physician who served as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and as president of the British Medical Association (1875). He was the first person to describe renal anaemia.
The Edinburgh Seven were the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. They began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869 and, although the Court of Session ruled that they should never have been admitted, and they did not graduate or qualify as doctors, the campaign they fought gained national attention and won them many supporters, including Charles Darwin. Their campaign put the demands of women for a university education on the national political agenda, and eventually resulted in legislation to ensure that women could be licensed to practice medicine in 1876.
The London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW) established in 1874 was the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors. The patrons, vice-presidents, and members of the committee that supported and helped found the London School of Medicine for Women wanted to provide educated women with the necessary facilities for learning and practicing midwifery and other branches of medicine while also promoting their future employment in the fields of midwifery and other fields of treatment for women and children.
The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was founded by Sophia Jex-Blake in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 1886, with support from the National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women. Sophia Jex-Blake was appointed as both the director and the dean of the school. The first class of women to study at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women consisted of eight students, the youngest of whom was nineteen years of age. Throughout its twelve years in operation, the school struggled to find financial funding to remain open. A rival institution, the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, set up by Elsie Inglis with the help of her father John Inglis, attracted several students of Jex-Blake, including Martha Cadell and Grace Cadell. St Mungo's College and Queen Margaret College in Glasgow also accepted women medical students and when the Scottish universities began to do so the Edinburgh School of Medicine could no longer compete. The school closed in 1898. Over the twelve years of its operation, the Edinburgh School of Medicine provided education to approximately eighty female students. Of those eighty students, thirty-three completed the full course of medical training at the Edinburgh School while many others chose to finish their education at outside institutions.
David Skae MD, FRCSEd was a Scottish physician specialising in psychological medicine. He has been described as the founder of the Edinburgh School of Psychiatry and several of his assistants and pupils went on to become leading psychiatrists throughout the British Isles.
Jessie MacLaren MacGregor was one of the first women to be awarded an MD from the University of Edinburgh in 1899. Along with Elsie Inglis she was instrumental in setting up the Muir Hall of Residence for Women Students in Edinburgh, and the Hospice, a nursing home and maternity hospital for poor women.
John Chiene, CB, FRSE, FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon, who was Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh during some of its most influential years. He was a founder of the Edinburgh Ambulance Service. The Chiene Medal is presented as an annual prize in surgery at the University. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1897 to 1899.
The Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont was a medical hospital during World War I active from January 1915 to March 1919 operated by Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH), under the direction of the French Red Cross and located at Royaumont Abbey. The Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey, located near Asnières-sur-Oise in Val-d'Oise, approximately 30 km north of Paris, France. The hospital was started by Dr Frances Ivens and founder of SWH, Dr Elsie Maud Inglis. It was especially noted for its performance treating soldiers involved in the Battle of the Somme.
James Scarth Combe FRSE, FRCSEd (1796–1883) was a British surgeon. He was the first person to give an accurate description of pernicious anaemia and to recognise that atrophic gastritis was a feature of the condition. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1850 and served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1851–52.
Sir James William Beeman Hodsdon KBE, FRCSEd (1858-1928) was an eminent Scottish surgeon who served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1914–1917.
Leith Hospital was situated on Mill Lane in Leith, Edinburgh, and was a general hospital with adult medical and surgical wards, paediatric medical and surgical wards, a casualty department and a wide range of out-patient services. It closed in 1987.
Grace Ross Cadell was a Scottish medical doctor and suffragist, and one of the first group of women to study medicine in Scotland and qualify.
John Duncan, LLD FRCSEd FRSE was a Scottish surgeon best known for his surgical teaching at the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. He was a pioneer of the use of electricity in surgery both for surgical cautery and for tumour necrosis. On the death of his father James Duncan in 1866 he became a director of the major drug manufacturer Duncan Flockhart & Co, which had been founded by his grandfather, also John Duncan. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1889 to 1891.
The Triple Qualification (TQ) was a medical qualification awarded jointly by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow between 1884 and 1993. Successful candidates could register with the General Medical Council (GMC) and practise medicine in the United Kingdom. It was a route used by international medical graduates and those unable to gain entry to university medical schools, which included women in the late 19th century and refugee medical students and doctors throughout the 20th century.
John Forbes David Inglis was an East India Company civil servant, who became Chief Commissioner of Oudh in North India. His disagreement with Lord Lytton's Afghan policy led to him being passed over for an expected promotion to be Governor of North West Province. He took early retirement and on his return to Edinburgh, he founded, jointly with his daughter Elsie Inglis, the Scottish Association for the Medical Education of Women. That association established the Edinburgh Medical College for Women at a time that women were not accepted into British university medical schools.
Dr William RussellFRCPE LLD, was a Scottish pathologist and physician who became Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He was the first to describe the cellular inclusion particles known as Russell bodies. He was an early supporter of medical education for women.
Ruth Nicholson FRCOG was an English obstetrician and gynaecologist who served as a surgeon in the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont, France during the First World War. For this work she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille d’Honneur des Épidémies by the French government. After the war she specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology as Clinical Lecturer and Gynaecological Surgeon at the University of Liverpool with consultant appointments at Liverpool hospitals. She was a founder member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, being elevated to fellow of the college in 1931.
Extramural medical education in Edinburgh began over 200 years before the university medical faculty was founded in 1726 and extramural teaching continued thereafter for a further 200 years. Extramural is academic education which is conducted outside a university. In the early 16th century it was under the auspices of the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and continued after the Faculty of Medicine was established by the University of Edinburgh in 1726. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries the demand for extramural medical teaching increased as Edinburgh's reputation as a centre for medical education grew. Instruction was carried out by individual teachers, by groups of teachers and, by the end of the 19th century, by private medical schools in the city. Together these comprised the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. From 1896 many of the schools were incorporated into the Medical School of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh under the aegis of the RCSEd and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and based at Surgeons' Hall. Extramural undergraduate medical education in Edinburgh stopped in 1948 with the closure of the Royal Colleges' Medical School following the Goodenough Report which recommended that all undergraduate medical education in the UK should be carried out by universities.
