The Aldersgate Medical School was a medical school in east London, in existence from about 1825 to 1848. One of many private medical schools of the period, it had popular lecturers on its staff, and proved a serious rival to
St. Bartholomew's Hospital as a teaching institution.[1]
Foundation
The Aldersgate School was set up in 1825 by
Frederick Tyrrell; the founding group included
William Lawrence,
William Coulson and others.[2][3] At that point the shared medical school of
Guy's Hospital and
St. Thomas's Hospital was divided. Tyrrell lectured at the Aldersgate School, but later took a position at St. Thomas's, and was no longer involved with the Aldersgate school.[4] Lawrence was also an early supporter of the school, lecturing on surgery in 1826–7; but he withdrew after taking a position at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.[5] Lawrence was a reformer, and the background was his opposition to an 1824 regulation of the
Royal College of Surgeons aiming to limit the number of medical schools that a surgical student could attend. He saw this measure as intended to force students into the hospital medical schools.[6]Jones Quain taught anatomy alongside Lawrence; but he had to drop out following a dissection wound.[7]
Henry Clutterbuck of the nearby Aldersgate Dispensary moved his lectures to the school in 1826.[8] In the same year
Peter Roget was brought in to lecture on physiology.[9]
Staff
James Wardrop, one of the founders, lectured on surgery alongside Lawrence, and provided some continuity.[10] The school retained a reputation for radicalism, and sympathy with French theories.[11]
In the 1830s prominent replacement lecturers were found for the initial ones.
Frederic Carpenter Skey was in dispute with Lawrence at St. Bartholomew's, and taught surgery for a decade.[12] The physician
James Hope from the mid-1830s combined lecturing at the Aldersgate School with other positions.[13] The pharmacologist
Jonathan Pereira came in to lecture on
materia medica.[14]Robert Edmond Grant lectured on anatomy, and
Thomas Hodgkin on pathology.[15]
With the eventual decline of the school in the 1840s, some of its staff moved to St. Bartholomew's medical school. They included
James Paget.[16]