Memorial Addressed to the Managers of The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Notes

A rare critical report of the conditions at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh by Robert Jackson, Inspector of Military Hospitals. Dr James Gregory, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, had earlier the same year begun a lengthy dispute with the Royal Infirmary over its management arrangements that ultimately led to some surgeons being excluded. Jackson 'takes the liberty, in a few words and in simple language, to bring in view some defects in the construction, arrangement and equipment of the house as an hospital... which, do not appear to have attracted the notice [of Gregory]' (p. 4). In sum, the rooms are too small and poorly ventilated, the fireplaces are wrong, the beds are dirty and too difficult to clean, etc. etc. In this copy the comparative 'than most other materials' has been struck through at the end of a statement that canvas is easily purified. This may be an authorial correction: this copy is from the collection of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (though without mark of ownership), who was one of the managers of the Royal Infirmary from 1785 onward.
ESTC locates four copies: NLS, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Yale School of Medicine, and the US National Library of Medicine.