Scottish Hospital Records

[DavidWW]

Some weeks ago I posted an extract from the 2005:11 edition of “Scottish Archives: The Journal of the Scottish Records Association” (just published), by Carol Parry - “Web-based access to Scottish Health Records”.

Since then, TalkingScot have received the permission of the Scottish Records Association to post the full article on TalkingScot. This follows.

For details of the Scottish Records Association, please see their website at http://www.scottishrecordsassociation.org/



Web-Based Access to Scottish Health Records

Carol Parry

SYNOPSIS

Scotland has played an important role in the field of medicine out of all proportion to its size, not only in innovations and discoveries but also in the influence of the Scottish medical schools and their teaching. The archival resources available are, as a consequence very rich, with important material to be found amongst the records of government, local government, the health services archives, the universities and the royal colleges.

The internet has increasingly been utilised to provide access to these outstanding collections. Individual repositories have placed descriptions of their archival holdings on their own websites and have also participated in various collaborative projects from a variety of funding bodies.

Sites of importance for the history of medicine in Scotland range from the online catalogues of the National Archives of Scotland and the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) to Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) projects and the latest online resource to be launched, the Scotland and Medicine website.

The Scottish Records Association Conference in 2004, entitled ‘A Picture of Health?,’ examined health and medical records, a topic not visited since the annual conference in 1991. The 2004 conference provided an opportunity to re-examine the types of records available and the uses to which they could be put. This was a particularly relevant topic as there is an ever-increasing interest in studying the history of medicine, particularly in its social aspects.

This interest is reflected in the number of courses now being made available to study the subject. The Open University has recently introduced a new undergraduate course, 'A218 Medicine and Society in Europe 1500-1930', and medical students are increasingly encouraged to look at medicine from an historical perspective. Medical students who have chosen a history of medicine module from the University of Glasgow now visit the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons each year to look at original sources. Likewise, St Andrews University Medical School now offers a module to medical undergraduates which includes an exploration of the history and uses of herbs in medicine.

Scotland is ideally placed for such study having played an important role in the field of medicine out of all proportion to its size, not only in innovations and discoveries but also in the influence of the Scottish medical schools and their teaching. The archival resources available are, as a consequence, very rich.with important material to be found amongst the records of the U.K. and Scottish government, local government, the health services’ archives, the universities and also the three royal colleges: the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (founded in 1505), the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1681), and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (1599).

With the advent of the internet, access to information about archive collections has altered radically and will increasingly change and improve in the future. Funding agencies and archivists alike have been keen to increase accessibility for researchers with a corresponding growth in the amount of resources available, of images and archive repository finding aids – a situation in 1991 that could only be dreamed of. With 85 per cent of visitors to archives in 2004 being internet users, the internet is without doubt the most effective means of providing greater accessibility.

Individual repositories have placed descriptions of their archival holdings on their own websites and have also participated in various collaborative projects from a variety of funding bodies. As a consequence, the researcher is now faced with an almost bewildering choice of websites in which to search for relevant material as well as having the challenge of keeping pace with any new developments. When the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine launched Medhist, a gateway for medical history resources, in July 2002, it contained 432 records or links to medical history sites. By February 2006 this number had increased to over 1070. An on-line directory and information resource highlighting Scotland's contribution to the development of medicine, surgery, public health and health technologies is one of the aims of the Scotland and Medicine Partnership, a three-year project which was granted funding by the Regional Development Challenge Fund in the autumn of 2004. The site was formerly launched in July 2005 under the URL www.scotlandandmedicine.com. It includes links to Scottish museum, archive and library collections relating to the history of medicine as well as providing information on key people and places of medical importance. Hopefully this site will be one of the first places to look on the internet in the future when researching medical history in Scotland. Until this site is fully developed though, there are several key sites that must be searched in order to find relevant archival sources.

Details of government records relating to health and health issues can be found by searching the online catalogue of the National Archives of Scotland (NAS). These include those records found within the Scottish Office Home and Health Department (HH series), Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (AF series), Mental Welfare Commission (MC series) and the General Nursing Council for Scotland (GNC). Much valuable material can also be found in the gifted and deposited collections (GD series). The holdings of the NAS have to be supplemented by those of the National Archives at Kew (TNA). The TNA website offers research guides describing available sources on a variety of health related topics which provide a help when searching the online catalogue. This website also hosts the National Register of Archives (NRA) which contains information on the whereabouts of British manuscripts and records including information sent by the National Register of Archives for Scotland (NRAS). The ARCHON directory, also on the TNA website, complements the National Register of Archives by providing contact details and addresses of repositories both in the United Kingdom and also for other countries that have substantial papers listed in the National Register of Archives.
Many local authority archives relating to health, such as medical officer of health reports, poor law records and public health committee minutes, can be found by searching the online catalogue of the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) website. This partnership project among the NAS, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Genealogical Society of Utah provides a single electronic catalogue to the holdings of over 50 Scottish archive repositories. These include descriptions of archives at collection level held in the National Library of Scotland, within certain institutions of the higher education sector, at two of the Royal Colleges (the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow), health services archives (apart from Dumfries and Galloway) as well as local authority archives and specialist repositories. The Scottish Records Association publishes on its website archival summaries of many records not covered by the SCAN project, such as those held in local studies libraries or in museums and some of these contain material of interest to the medical historian.

Details about medical education and research conducted at Scottish universities together with other papers relating to health can be accessed via the Archives Hub, a central integrated site for the United Kingdom university and higher education sector. Like SCAN, the Archives Hub provides collection level descriptions, contributors coming from fifteen Scottish Higher Education Institutes. Not all Scottish contributors to the Hub are also contributors to SCAN and coverage from individual repositories may be different, so it is advisable to check both sites. The Archives Hub in Scotland is complemented by the Gateway to Archives of Scottish Higher Education (GASHE) project. This project aims to open up the institutional records of ten Scottish Higher Education Institutions by providing more detailed descriptions than those available on the Archives Hub, in some cases upgrading existing catalogues, but in many cases cataloguing material for the first time.

Hospital records can be found using the Hospital Records Database, a joint project between the National Archives and the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. This database provides information on the existence and location of records of hospitals in the United Kingdom and there are currently over 2,800 entries. A small number of hospitals who maintain their own archives have been included but the coverage of records still held by hospitals is limited. The information contained in the database includes the administrative details of the hospitals and their status or type, the location and covering dates of administrative and clinical records and the existence of lists, catalogues and other finding aids. The majority of the hospital records for Scotland that are described in the Hospital Records Database are stored in the health services archives, namely the Lothian Health Services Archives in Edinburgh, the Greater Glasgow NHS Board Archive in Glasgow, Northern Health Services Archive in Aberdeen and Dumfries and Galloway Health Board Archives in Dumfries. The University of Dundee has responsibility for Tayside Health Board records. Fuller descriptions of holdings of the health services archives including board of management records and any personal papers that may have been deposited can be found by accessing the SCAN and the Archives Hub websites. As stated above, it is necessary to check both websites as coverage is not consistent. For example, the records of the Northern Health Services Archives are only available on the SCAN site whereas those health board archives managed by universities are also on the Archives Hub website.

Despite the existence of integrated web-based catalogues, it is still well worth looking at home websites, if a repository has one, otherwise much valuable material might be missed. The website of an individual repository may provide a useful source list, digitised images or even archive film footage as well as descriptions or links to websites of any project work that has been carried out.

The Higher Education Sector has benefited in recent years from funding via the Research Libraries Programme (RSLP), a United Kingdom-wide initiative, funded by the four higher education funding bodies. The programme started in the academic year 1999-2000 and finished on 31 July 2002. Emphasis was placed on encouraging Higher Education Institutions to work collaboratively and although the projects have mainly dealt with traditional library and archive materials, they have, in almost every case, created an electronic resource. The GASHE project, mentioned above, is an RSLP-funded website. Of particular importance to medical historians is the Finding the Right Clinical Notes Project which ran from January 2000 to July 2002. This was a partnership led by Edinburgh University Library and Lothian Health Services Archive. The project addressed the problem of providing access to Personal Health Records (PHRs), these being records that relate to the physical and mental health of an identifiable individual that have been made by, or on the advice of, a health professional in connection with that patient's care and treatment. Under this definition, records included in the project varied from a modern X-ray to a eighteenth century prescription. Survey work, conducted by post and by follow-up visits where appropriate, revealed considerable amounts of material, now described on the project's online database. The facility for searching subjects is particularly useful. Although the database does not claim to be fully comprehensive it does, however, provide an excellent start in locating PHRs in Scotland. The website also includes other resources to aid researchers including a bibliography and digitised images of the main types of records described on the database.

Further project funding for medical archives has come from the Wellcome Trust grant scheme, Research Resources in Medical History. This scheme was established in 2001, in response to a growing awareness of the problem of reduced or restricted access to collections either because of their fragile physical condition or because they remain uncatalogued. Included in this scheme have been the Forensic Medicine Archives Project based at Glasgow University Archives, the Unlocking the Medicine Chest project based at the University of Dundee and nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical archives at Aberdeen University. Lothian Health Services Archive has benefited from two conservation projects and further Scottish grants are likely in future rounds of awards.

The displays of both completed and ongoing projects at the Scottish Records Association conference in November 2004 was testimony to the tremendous amount of time and effort that has taken place in recent years to open up access to researchers. With the promise of more to follow, researchers are in a better position than ever to find out about archive resources relating to Scottish health.



References (unfortunately the embedded, superscripted references to the following sites don't translate to a post on on TS).

For an excellent background to new perspectives in the history of medicine see the Introduction in P. Elmer, (ed), The Healing Arts, Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1500-1800, (Manchester:, 2003), pp. xi-xxiii.

National Council of Archives, Giving Value. Funding Priorities for UK Archives 2005-2010, (London, 2005).

http://130.88.13.166/index.html

The lead partner of the Scotland and Medicine Partnership is the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Details about project can be found at
http://www.scottishmuseums.org.uk/membe ... _intro.asp

http://www.nas.gov.uk/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cata ... efault.asp

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/

Contact details of Scottish repositories can be found on the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) website at
http://www.scan.org.uk/Directory/contactdetails.htm

http://www.scan.org.uk/

Descriptions of the manuscripts at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh are available on the College’s website at http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/library/catalogues.php

http://www.scottishrecordsassociation.org/

http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/

http://www.gashe.ac.uk/

I would like to thank Victoria Peters, Research Archivist at Glasgow University Archive Services for providing details regarding GASHE and other RSLP projects.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords/

For example the “History of Medicine” source list available on the Glasgow University Archives website at http://www.archives.gla.ac.uk/collects/source.html

Lothian Health Services Archive offers two silent films “Edinburgh: The Healthy City” produced in 1937 and “The Ever Open Door” which relates to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/images/index.html

http://www.clinicalnotes.ac.uk/

http://www.fmap.archives.gla.ac.uk/

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/archives/

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/historic/Cur ... ects.shtml

[Liz Turner]

David

What a good source of information. Thanks for the background.

Liz

[fionnghal]

hi folks, hope you all had a great Xmas and a smashing start to the new year.
i'm hoping someone can advise me where i might seek the info i require to track an elusive medical forebear of mine

i've found a informative site
http://www.rcpsg.ac.uk/FellowsandMember ... ngadoc.htm
for Glasgow medical gradutes.

unfortunately, the man i'm trying to find, Thomas Davidson, has an Edinburgh LRCS 1837 & LRCP 1859, and I haven't been able to track down a licentiate register which might list him.

Glasgow lists a Register of Single Licentiates 1815-1959. does anyone know if there is such a record for Edinburgh medical licentiates? i've tried the RCS & P sites but got lost many of the pages refused to open for me.

he, very frustratingly, moved to Northumberland, after a brief stop in Lancashire, where every census lists him as being born in Scotland, but not where! and having tried just about every other avenue, i'm hoping that some kind of medical record might volunteer a clue.

another useful resource that researchers may consider for early medics of all kinds is :
PJ & RV Wallis' tome, "18C Medics" ISBN 1871768004. it has a wealth of information in it, including many instances of family relationships, which Masters apprentices served under, when and - by carefully cross-referencing the data - where. my Thomas isn't early enough for it, but many other Scottish doctors are included. i was able to borrow it by inter-library loan [post c.£10]

i'm hoping we might manage a trip to Edinburgh this coming April, all going well, and if i know where to look, am quite prepared to do the dogwork required

thanks for your time

[LesleyB]

Hi fionnghal
...and a warm welcome to TalkingScot

I'm not sure if this will be of help, and you may have done this already, but have you tried contacting Edinburgh University? He may have studied there, perhaps? One of my lot was a dental graduate from Edinburgh and they were able to give me a small amount of info. The archivist can be contacted at: arnott.wilson@ed.ac.uk

Best wishes
Lesley

[DavidWW]

Hi Fiona

You need to make contact with the archivist at The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow .....

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow
232-242 St Vincent Street
GLASGOW G2 5RJ
Tel: o141 221 6072
Fax: +44 (0) 141 221 1804

Librarian james.beaton@rcpsglasg.ac.uk

...... as well as the archivists at Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.

In addition, in this particular case, you should also search the records of the medical graduates of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, as it's by no means certain that he would have become a licentiate or fellow of the various, appropriate colleges in Glasgow and Edinburgh, especially if he moved to England after graduation from a Scottish university medical "school".

David

[fionnghal]

thanks a milion, Lesley
i hadn't tried that. i will, right now

i have no way of knowing if he did a conventional course or if he was apprenticed and only sat the qualifying exams. i've scoured The Scotsman archives which listed graduates annually, more often if they'd reason, but he never appeared in any of their graduate listings

i'll try this. thanks you very much indeed

[LesleyB]

Hi fionnghal
I hope you find something! Do let us know how it goes

Best wishes
Lesley

[fionnghal]

ooh, i've just discovered there were 2 replies that was quick work,

hi Dave, i'd assumed that the Register of Single Licentiates, 1815-1959 which Glasgow has in their College Archive would just be the Glasgow graduates. thanks, i'll try that too

thanks for your time

[DavidWW]

ooh, i've just discovered there were 2 replies that was quick work,

hi Dave, i'd assumed that the Register of Single Licentiates, 1815-1959 which Glasgow has in their College Archive would just be the Glasgow graduates. thanks, i'll try that too

BTW, it's David , never, ever, please, pretty please "Dave"

While many or most licentiates or fellows of the separate colleges of physicians and surgeons in Glasgow would have graduated from the eponymous university, that's not to say that such licentiates or fellows didn't qualify for such membership based on graduation from a medical course at Edinburgh, St Andrews, or Aberdeen; never mind, "shock horror" , English, or even Irish, or European universities with appropriate medical courses.

Given the restrictions involved as regards Scots attending English universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge, it was very common for Scots to seek post-graduate qualifications in Dutch, German and French universities !!

David

[fionnghal]

ok, and i'm Fionnghal

right! that's really interesting. The Scotsman lists a lot of overseas graduates at the foot of the Scots &c lists. i'd assumed they were born abroad but came to Scotland for their education. Perhaps instead, some had simply done prior studying abroad then returned to Scotland for the all important exams. i'll certainly bear it in mind, and thanks david