The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and its Worthies

The familiar barber's pole, striped red and white, is a token of a tradition linking barbers and surgeons, and a reminder of an age when bleeding was a popular therapeutic method. The pole represents the phlebotomist's staff which the patient gripped to distend his veins; the red stripe symbolises the fillet placed to obstruct the veins; the white a bandage used when the bleeding was completed. In Dublin the barbers and surgeons were members of the guild of St Mary Magdalene established by Henry VI in 1446,1 an association which persisted well into the eighteenth century to the disadvantage of the surgeons. The need to establish a College of Surgeons was clearly articulated in 1765 by a Limerick surgeon, Silvester O'Halloran (1728-1807), who demanded `That a decent and convenient edifice be created in the capital ... That an exact list be taken throughout the kingdom of all reputable surgeons.. .'. Public examinations were to be held for all who wished to have their names included in the annual register, and he added the Utopian recommendation that courses of instruction should be provided free to any Irishman.2