‘The best description of the Oran Ooutan’: Daniel Beeckman’s Voyage to Borneo
Daniel Beeckman’s A voyage to and from the island of Borneo in the East-Indies (1718) reveals how natural history, British colonialism and medical institutions were intertwined in the 18th century, as well as having a direct connection to George Edwards, an important figure in RCP history and the earliest European depiction of an orangutan. The heritage library purchased the book in 2023 through generous support from the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the National Libraries.
You may now turn over your papers: a history of exams at the RCP
Examinations of medical knowledge have always been a core part of the Royal College of Physicians’ activities. But what was on the syllabus historically? And what was it like to take the exams? We explore those questions in this post.
Katie Birkwood
'The blow struck the world with immense terror’: Accessing emotional reactions to the Black Death of 1348.
Guest blogger, Emily Russell shares her research about emotional responses to the Black Death
Exploring representation of disabled physicians in the RCP collection
Exploring representation of disabled physicians in the RCP collection with volunteer Marta Dagnachew and Gail Chapman, public programmes officer
Indexing the RCP annals
‘He marvelled how the president could be so saucy’: index to the RCP’s first century of Comitia meetings now available
Ker-pow at the RCP - fun, flare and organised chaos
A look back at two recent events where young visitors to the RCP discovered how ‘science superheroes crushed COVID’, dressed up as bogies, and met world-leading scientist, Professor Tom Solomon.
A Library at War Time
Following last week's post about evacuating museum collections from the RCP during the Second World War, today library volunteer Kate So looks at how the book collections were protected during the bombing of London in the 1940s.
Race to save the RCP: The evacuation of the RCP collections during the Second World War
In the weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War in August 1939, the Royal College of Physicians, joined a gigantic, covert effort to evacuate its historic collections from London to the countryside ‘for safe custody during the war.’
Elizabeth Douglas
Fortitude launches
On 26 September the RCP Museum launched Fortitude, a new exhibition which shares the experiences of healthcare professionals who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sarah Backhouse
Queen Charlotte, King George, and the sinister doctor(s) Monro
If you’ve been enjoying #Queen Charlotte: A @Bridgerton Story, you might have been wondering about the real people that it is based on. Read on for more on George III’s illness and the two(!) Dr Monros…