UCC marks Cork’s medical history
South Bridge of Cork was painted in 1834 by Woodroffe’s pupil, George Dartnell, who was both a doctor and an artist.
South Bridge of Cork was painted in 1834 by Woodroffe’s pupil, George Dartnell, who was both a doctor and an artist.
John Woodroffe was the son of a Dublin wine merchant who came to Cork in the early years of the nineteenth century to make a career for himself as a surgeon and teacher. He began as a junior surgeon in the Military Hospital in the South Parish. In 1811, he leased a building in Margaret Street and began to lecture on anatomy to young men who were preparing to enter formal medical education in Trinity College or the newly founded Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Woodroffe’s school was the first anatomy school in Cork and laid the foundations for a flowering of medical education in the city in the 1830s which in turn ensured that medicine was a founding faculty of Queens College Cork in 1845. He welcomed young artists to his courses and gave lectures on anatomy connected to sculpture and painting. He also lectured to the general public-making special arrangements for “a female auditory”-and gave the considerable proceeds of these lectures to the South Infirmary over many years.
The exhibition in the lobby of the Boole Library in UCC tells the fascinating story of John Woodroffe and the Cork anatomists through storyboards and original material from the UCC Boole library, the South Infirmary, the UCC Department of Archaeology, and the Crawford Gallery.
The Exhibition runs until the end of December and is open from Monday-Friday 8.30am to 7.45pm and Saturday 10am to 12.45pm. Admission is free.