An example of the way in which Christianity was hugely significant in developing healthcare, can be seen by what happened with the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, one of Scotland’s leading hospitals. One of the students from Scotland who studied under the Christian, Hermann Boerhaave, in the Medical School at the University of Leiden, was John Munro. Inspired by Boerhaave’s model he became the catalyst and mover for a charity hospital in Edinburgh when he produced a plan in 1720. The project for the hospital was supported by the Royal College of Physicians, who had already been giving free health care for the poor, the Incorporation of Surgeons and Apothecaries, and the University of Edinburgh, represented by his son Alexander Munro, who was the Professor of Anatomy there. After discussions, the leading group of men wrote that “As men and Christians we have the strongest inducements and even obligations to this sort of charity as it is warmly recommended and enjoined in the gospel.” As such, they were also following the vision laid out in the Reformers’ First Book of Discipline of 1560.
With funding from the stock holders of the Fishery Company and donations from private individuals, alongside the support of numerous Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches, the Hospital for the Sick Poor was established at the head of Robertson’s Close on 6th November, 1729, which was run by six surgeon-chemists. Seven years later, in 1736, King George II granted it a Royal Charter, and it was named the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
By the late 1730s it was soon realised that this hospital was far too small, and plans were made to build a bigger, and better one. Alexander Munro and the Lord Provost, George Drummond, led the movement to raise funding for this new hospital. After going through a crisis of faith because of personal issues, he was warmed by the preaching of the evangelical minister, Revd Alexander Webster of the Tolbooth Kirk, who encouraged him in the process of building the new infirmary, and so the funding drive began; Drummond remarked “The Lord gives remarkable success to all our applications.”Of those who gave funding there were many wealthy individuals, but again, a powerful support came from the churches, including the special fundraising of George Whitefield the evangelist. In 1741 the new Royal Infirmary was opened with 228 beds.
When the Christian, Joseph Lister, was the leading Professor of Surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in the 19th century, he was keen to see that the standards of hygiene were kept sharp at the hospital. However, he deplored the poor quality of the nurses there who were badly trained. At his instigation the hospital board appointed Deputy Surgeon General Charles Hamilton Fasson to liaise with Florence Nightingale, who had become famous during her nursing exploits among the wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and became known as the “Lady of the Lamp”. This dedicated and unorthodox Christian lady became the pioneer of modern nursing, teaching her students to be professionals at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. When Fasson contacted her about the possibility of sending “Nightingale Nurses” to improve the nursing standards at the Royal Infirmary, she replied in 1872: “Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We are going to undertake the nursing of this beastly “den of thieves”. (Nothing that I have ever known except the Vienna General Hospital approaches it in badness…)”Thus, a team of Nightingale Nurses came up to Edinburgh, led by the Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, to pioneer professional nursing in our capital and set up the first Scottish school for training nurses in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
At the instruction of the Lord Provost, Thomas Boyd, a new site was again found for this hospital in 1879, and it opened at Lauriston Place, near the university. Only recently was a new Royal Infirmary built in Little France on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 2003. The Royal Hospital for Sick Children (popularly known as the Sick Kids hospital) at Sciennes in Edinburgh, moved to a new building at the Royal Infirmary in 2019, making it one of the top medical facilities for children in the world. This hospital for children was founded in 1859 through the tireless work of the Christian dental surgeon, John Smith, and by a board, which was chaired by the Revd Dr James Hodson, Rector of The Edinburgh Academy. The hospital opened the following year. Its first surgical ward was begun by the Christian, Sir Joseph Bell, famous, along with another Edinburgh Christian, Sir Henry Littlejohn, for pioneering forensics and being the inspiration behind Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ character.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: The Old Surgical Hospital, Drummond St, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh: Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons