Glasgow's extraordinary medical history museum

This year marks the 140th anniversary of the world’s first successful brain tumour operation. It was performed on a 14 year old girl by the celebrated super-surgeon Sir William Macewen in Glasgow.

Today such operations are commonplace and performed in hospitals around the world, saving thousands of lives every year, but in 1879 it was an amazing advance in medicine.

Next month the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (RCPSG) will hold a symposium to celebrate the historic breakthrough, hear the story behind this groundbreaking operation and discover some of the amazing advances that have taken place in this extraordinary field of surgery.

Born near Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, in 1848 Macewen graduated in medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1872. He was highly influenced by fellow Glasgow doctor Joseph Lister who pioneered the use of antiseptic in surgery, dramatically reducing the mortality of patients who might otherwise have died from post-operative infections rather than the trauma of surgery.

William Macewen

Macewen was a member of the RCPSG and in 1879 he gave a lecture in the main hall on his brain surgery techniques at which the young girl he operated on attended to show off the success of her treatment.

“Doctors would often give talks at the Royal College on the latest discoveries and techniques and that would include showing off patients and specimens. One of the meetings that happened here in 1879 was by William Macewen, one of the most prominent surgeons in Scotland,” said Ross McGregor, Library and Heritage Manager of the College.

“We have lots of archive material relating to Macewen, including the hand written surgical notebook in which he recorded everything he was up to, his surgical methods and techniques. and even his operating table.

“We also have a photograph of the patient, a 14-year-old girl. He successfully removed the tumour from just above the eye, wrote it up in his journal and took a photograph of her. He was quite an early user of photographs of patients to record their recovery.”

In addition to brain surgery Macewen specialised in orthopaedics developing the first bone grafts and pioneering knee surgery using a special instrument now known as Macewen’s osteotome to treat rickets. The condition caused by a lack of Vitamin D resulted in soft and deformed bones and was a major problem among children in Glasgow at the time.

A set of early amputation instruments

Macewen also developed surgical methods for removal of lungs to treat tuberculosis and lung cancer to save many lives. Another of his techniques devised in 1880 and still used today is the method of inserting a tube into the trachea to keep a patient’s airway open.

In 1916 Macewen helped found what is now Erskine Hospital to treat thousands of First World War amputees.

“He was a surgical innovator in quite a lot of different areas. His whole career was based in Glasgow but he was internationally known,” said Mr McGregor who is responsible for looking after more than 3,000 items in the museum and more than 30,000 volumes of historic text books in the library dating back to 1479.

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow was founded in 1599 by Scots born but French trained physician Peter Lowe and is the second oldest of its kind in the world.

Peter Lowe

Lowe was born in Glasgow around 1550 at a time when there were no medical schools in Scotland. He is believed to have travelled to France around 1565 to be educated in medicine and surgery.

“Physicians and surgeons were different professions then. As there were no proper medical degrees in Britain in 1599 anyone calling themselves a physician would have had to have gone to one of the leading European universities.

“Surgeons weren’t university educated at all, they were trained through an apprenticeship. The two professions were very different but when Peter Lowe saw the standard of training in Paris that gave him the idea to bring the two professions together.”

When Peter Lowe came back to Scotland in the 1590s he wanted to try and introduce some of the higher standards he saw on the continent into Glasgow so he petitioned King James VI for a Royal Charter which was eventually granted in 1599.

“The college was established to institute some method of licensing for people practising surgery, medicine or dispensing drugs. The college was intended to put an end to the free for all that existed at the time and introduce some standards and regulations into the healthcare and medical professions of Glasgow,” said Mr McGregor.

As part of the charter there was a commitment for members of the college to give free health care to the poor once a month.

“It was the first free healthcare system in a way,” said Mr McGregor who explained that in the early 17th century poor people never had any contact with a doctor. Healthcare was only for people who could afford it so introducing free treatment for the needy was something of a revolution.

In 1698 the RCPSG acquired its first permeant home in the Trongate area of Glasgow and that’s when it started building up a world class library and museum for the education and training of its members.

Around 160 years later the RSPSG moved to its current premises in St Vincent Street Glasgow where the hallowed halls are adorned with portraits of past presidents, eminent fellows of the college and items of historic significance such as the fireplace in the former dining room which once heated the hospital ward used by Joseph Lister.

Joseph Lister

“Lister is by far the most famous of our past fellows because of the mass of impact of his development of antiseptic surgery,” said Mr McGregor.

“Most people don’t appreciate that although he had a career which was spent in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London it was during the decade he spent in Glasgow that he formulated his idea of antiseptic surgery and put it into practice.”

Other items of historic importance include a variety of medical instruments, hand-written papers and even the personal surgical instruments of explorer David Livingstone and a cast of the deformed humerus bone used to identify his remains before he was interred in Westminster Abbey.

Throughout the year the RCPSG puts on public exhibitions of some of its archived material although opening times are very limited and visitors are encouraged to check the website for details.

Today the college has more than 14,000 members worldwide and in December 2018, after more than 400 years, Professor Jackie Taylor became the first woman President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

Speaking as she took up her post Professor Taylor said: “I feel very proud, and also very humbled, to be the College’s first ever female President in our four hundred year history.”

Professor Jackie Taylor the first ever female President of the 400-year-old Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.