School of Medicine (Trinity College Dublin)

Medical training has taken place at Trinity College since the seventeenth century, originally on a rather unremarkable basis; extant records suggest that by 1616 only one medical degree had been conferred. In a letter to James Ussher in 1628, Provost William Bedell commented, "I suppose it hath been an error all this time to neglect the faculties of law and physic and attend only to the ordering of one poor College of Divines." for example, the first Fellow to be chosen Medicus, John Temple (son of the then-provost of the college, Sir William Temple), went on to pursue a prominent legal career. A 17th-century manuscript preserved in the Trinity College Library, describing the ceremonies accompanying conferral of degrees, makes no mention of graduates in medicine. The first recorded named holder of a Dublin medical degree was John Stearne, a Trinity graduate who had trained as a doctor in England (possibly at Cambridge), and was appointed a Fellow upon returning to Trinity in 1651. The matter was resolved by Stearne, who offered to raise funds to cover the costs of restoring the building (which the college could not afford at the time) as a daughter college for the education of physicians, with Stearne as its president, and with medical students there first becoming members of Trinity; A "Colledge of Physitians in Dublin" was thus granted a royal charter in 1667, but no records survive from the time of Stearne's death in 1669 to confirm whether medical students from Trinity were in residence, ==Alumni==

Notable alumni and former students include: • George James Allman (1812–1898), British biologist • George Johnston Allman (1824–1904), Irish mathematician and botanist • Leonard H. Ball (1900–1966), Australian surgeon • Edward Hallaran Bennett (1837–1907), Irish surgeon • Dame Beulah Bewley, British epidemiologist • Noël Browne (1915–1997), Irish politician and physician • Denis Parsons Burkitt (1911–1993), Irish surgeon • Sir Charles Cameron (1841–1924), Scottish politician and newspaper editor • Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802–1880), Irish physician • Ara Darzi (born 1960), British surgeon and politician • David Drummond (1852–1932), British physician and academic • Michael ffrench-O'Carroll (1919–2007), Irish physician and politician • Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957), Irish otolaryngologist, writer and politician • William Crampton Gore (1871–1946), Irish painter • Robert James Graves (1796–1853), Irish surgeon • Edward Hand (1744–1802), Irish-American military and political leader • Samuel Haughton (1795–1873), Irish scientific writer • William Hayes (1918–1994), Irish-Australian microbiologist and geneticist • David Healy, Irish psychiatrist • Mary Henry (born 1940), Irish politician and physician • William Irvine (1741–1804), Irish-American military and political leader • Sophia Jex-Blake (1840–1912), British physician, educator and feminist • Robert Kane (1809–1890), Irish chemist • Charles Lever (1806–1872), Irish novelist • John Martin (1812–1875), Irish nationalist • Joseph Moloney (1857–1896), British military medical officer • William Fetherstone Montgomery (1797–1859), Irish obstetrician • George Morrison (born 1922), Irish documentary maker • Francis Murphy (1809–1891), Australian politician and pastoralist • Sir Thomas Myles (1857–1937), Irish surgeon and nationalist • Edmund O'Donovan (1844–1883), British journalist • Barry Edward O'Meara (1783–1836), Irish surgeon • Alexander Charles O'Sullivan (1858–1924), Irish pathologist • Edith Pechey (1845–1908), British physician and feminist • Maxwell Simpson (1815–1902), Irish chemist • Robert William Smith (1807–1873), Irish surgeon • William Stokes (1804–1878), Irish physician • Sir William Stokes (1839–1900), Irish surgeon • John Anderson Strong (born 1915), Scottish surgeon and academic • Jeremy Swan (1922–2005), Irish cardiologist • John Todhunter (1839–1916), Irish poet and playwright • Leo Varadkar (born 1979), Taoiseach • Thomas Wilson (1663–1755), British bishop • Sir Robert Henry Woods (1865–1938), Irish physician and politician • Sir Almroth Wright (1861–1947), British bacteriologist and immunologist ==References==