Tour of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

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Enjoy a tour of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow as part of the Glasgow Blythswood Festival 2025!

About Tour of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

Listed Under Tour Events / History Events

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow was founded by surgeon Peter Lowe, physician Robert Hamilton and apothecary William Spang. They successfully petitioned King James VI and I and were granted a Royal Charter on 29th November 1599. This empowered the College to regulate and maintain standards for medicine which, in Glasgow in the late 16th century, were severely lacking. Medicine was a lottery and very expensive - and rarely worked!

The College has gone from strength to strength over the last 425 years and now incorporates 5 faculties of Physicians, Surgeons, Dentists, Podiatrists and Travel Medicine.

Originally based next to the Tron Theatre, we moved to St Enoch Square in 1791 and finally settled in our current home in 1862. Built by merchant Robert Blair in 1820, 242 St Vincent Street started life as a private residence and was initially alone on the hill overlooking the River Clyde. When the College bought the building we adapted it for meetings, lectures and demonstrations. In 1893 we employed leading architect Sir John James Burnet to extensively remodel the building - including building our magnificent College Hall.

Since then we've expanded into neighbouring buildings and gradually adapted them into modern meeting and teaching spaces.

The College has a working library that is open to the public as well as our Fellows and Members. The Library was founded in 1698 and since then we have collected thousands of books, some very rare and special editions such as Ambroise Paré's 'Les Oeuvres' printed in 1607, 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica' (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, published in Basel in 1543, a first edition from1859 of Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' and two volumes of JJ Audubon's "The Birds of North America", 1827-34. The latter can be seen on display in the Library on the top floor.

The tour will also incorporate our current exhibition: 'Sir William Macewen: At the Cutting Edge' about the 'father of neurosurgery' who carried out the world's first successful brain tumour removal at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1879.

There will be two tours of the College during the Blythswood Festival on Wednesday 7th May and Monday 12th May at 12:30 -1:30pm. Click on our College events page to be directed to the Eventbrite booking pages

The tour is free but we would welcome any donations to support our heritage and learning programmes

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All information (whether in text or photographs) is supplied in good faith but should not be relied upon as being a statement of representation or fact.

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