As part of the Celebrations marking the 300th Anniversary of the founding of the Edinburgh Medical School, Malcolm Fraser will be lecturing, alongside historian Harriet Blakeman, on “A Deep History of Health and Healing in Edinburgh”, discussing the pre-history behind the School, the remnants of these old establishments and the relationship between health and wellbeing in the city’s history. 5th February, 6.30, at the ECCI on Infirmary Street - no coincidence in the name…
The image shows Frank Mears’s imagining of Edinburgh in 1460, with the “Via Regia” - a tail end of the Roman Dere Street - accessing the steep Old Town from south and north, with 1. the old House of the Holy Trinity hospital high on the moors at Soutra, established in 1164 but by then in decline, 2. the Blackfriars Priory, established just outside the town in 1230 by the mendicant Dominican order (the site now occupied by the ECCI but also the location of that first, formal 1726 Medical School) and 3. the Holy Trinity Hospital, founded in 1460 as Soutra declined. Remnants of all remain.
