Abstract
In 1776 the Edinburgh Public Dispensary was established to provide free treatment to the city’s poor.
This new online resource contains over 10,000 pages of the dispensary’s patient case notes as well as fully searchable transcriptions of every single page. An index of diseases, symptoms, body parts, medicines, patients and practitioners makes this resource accessible and easy to use.
These case notes date from the earliest years of the dispensary’s operation – detailing over a decade of patient care. They provide a detailed account of the conditions, treatments and experiences of eighteenth-century Edinburgh’s sick poor and contain 1,372 patients, 174 medical practitioners and 900 diseases and treatments. On the website you can find stories like those of Kath Gibson – one of the city’s water carriers, who collected water from the city’s wells and delivered it all over the city, as well as Archibald MacDonald – a chairman, suffering from back pain caused by his work carrying the sedan chairs of the rich around the winding streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town.
rcpe.ac.uk/peoplesdispensary
