The History of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, 1599-1858; The History of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: The Shaping of the Medical Profession, 1858-1999

The History of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, 1599-1858

Johanna Geyer-Kordesch, Fiona Macdonald

Hambledon Press, £30, pp 478

ISBN 1 85285 186 4

The History of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: The Shaping of the Medical Profession, 1858-1999

Andrew Hull, Johanna Geyer-Kordesch

Hambledon Press, £30, pp 288

ISBN 1 85285 187 2

Rating:

Most of the major royal colleges have commissioned solid scholarly histories. Here is the latest, representing five years' work by three historians of medicine funded by the Wellcome Trust. But the titles are misleading because, rather than merely being an account of the Glasgow Faculty and of the physicians and surgeons of Glasgow, the pair of books are admirably more comprehensive and interesting. They cover the whole history of medicine, in the broadest sense, of Glasgow and western Scotland from the 16th century, and even the medical novels of Smollett and John Moore.

When it was founded in 1599, the Glasgow Faculty included not only physicians and surgeons …