The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. It was established in 1729. After moving to a new site in 1879, it claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later, in the British Empire. In 2003, it moved to a 900-bed site at Little France. It is the site of clinical medicine teaching as well as a teaching hospital for the University of Edinburgh Medical School. In 1960 the first successful kidney transplant in the UK was performed at the hospital. In 1964 the world's first coronary care unit was established at the hospital. It is the only site for liver, pancreas, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation in Scotland, and one of the country's two sites for kidney transplantation. In 2012, the Emergency Department had 113,000 patient attendances, the highest number in Scotland. It is managed by NHS Lothian.
History
Foundation and early history John Munro, President of the Incorporation of Surgeons in 1712, set in motion a project to establish a "Seminary of Medical Education" in Edinburgh, of which a General Hospital was an integral part. His son, Alexander Monro primus, by then Professor of Anatomy, circulated an anonymous pamphlet in 1721 on the necessity and advantage of erecting a hospital for the sick and poor. In 1725, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh wrote to the stock-holders of the Fishery Company, which was about to be wound up, suggesting that they assign their shares for the purpose of such a hospital. Other donors included many wealthy citizens, most of the physicians and several surgeons, numerous Church of Scotland parishes (at the urging of their Assembly) and the Episcopal meeting houses in Edinburgh.
The committee set up by the donors leased "a house of small rent" near the college from the university for 19 years. Known, at first, as the Hospital for the Sick Poor, the Physicians' Hospital, or Little House, it was established on 6 August 1729 opposite the head of Robertson's Close on the site of the building on the corner of South Bridge and Infirmary Street. It is now marked with a plaque. A "gentlewoman" was engaged as Mistress or House-keeper, and a "Nurse or Servant" was hired for the patients, both women to be resident and "free of the burden of children and the care of a separate family." The physicians, who had seen the poor gratis twice weekly at their college, arranged for one of their number to attend the hospital, to see both inpatients and outpatients. Six Surgeon-Apothecaries (Alexander Monro, John McGill, Francis Congalton, Robert Hope, John Douglas and George Cunninghame) also agreed to attend in turn, and to dispense the medicines prescribed by the physicians from their own shops, also without payment. The first patient, a lady from Caithness, was suffering from "chlorosis." She was discharged and recovered after three months. Thirty five patients were admitted in the first year, of whom 19 were cured, 5 recovered, 5 dismissed, either as incurable or for irregularities, and one died in the hospital (of "consumption"). They came from all over Scotland, but mainly from Edinburgh and its environs. Diseases cured included pains, inflammations, agues, ulcers, cancers, palsies, flux, consumption, hysterick disorders and melancholy. A free advice and medicine service for out-patients was very popular, receiving a 1,000 patients by 1754, which presented the hospital with prohibitively high costs and demand. Fundraising began for a new hospital, driven by Monro and Drummond, and the appeal attracted funds from churches throughout Scotland, landed gentry, private individuals, and prominent professionals including physicians, surgeons, merchants and lawyers, as well as donations of labour and building materials.
Infirmary Street
The infirmary received a royal charter from George II in 1736 which gave it its name of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and commissioned William Adam to design a new hospital on a site close by to the original building, on what later became Infirmary Street. In 1741 the hospital moved the short distance to the not yet completed building which eventually, on its completion in 1745, had 228 beds compared to 4 beds in the Little House. In 1750, Scottish surgeon Archibald Kerr left a slave plantation he owned in Jamaica, Red Hill Pen, to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in his will. Kerr also left the 39 slaves which were kept as forced labourers on the plantation to the infirmary, which owned Red Hill Pen from 1750 to 1893 (with slavery being abolished in Jamaica in 1833). According to the BBC, the infirmary used the wealth generated from Red Hill Pen to "buy medicines, construct a new building, employ staff, and heal Edinburgh's "sick poor"." In 2023, the health board of NHS Lothian publicly announced that they would be providing reparations for slavery after discovering the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh's ownership of the plantation. By the 1830s, the hospital had become short of space and, in 1832, the former Royal High School in nearby High School Yards, built by Alexander Laing in 1777, was converted to a surgical hospital with a new operating theatre built to the rear (east). This was soon found to be inadequate and a new surgical hospital, designed by David Bryce, was built fronting Drummond Street, opening in 1853. The new building was linked to the High School Yards building by an extension to the north. The Infirmary Street buildings were demolished in 1884 and replaced with public swimming baths and a school. The ornamental gates and gate piers now front the former surgical hospital on Drummond Street. The four attached Ionic columns on the frontispiece of the hospital were removed and incorporated as a combined column in a monument to the Covenanters who were defeated at the Battle of Rullion Green. This stands outside the entrance to Dreghorn Barracks on Redford Road in the south west of the city. The original surgical theatre, which was on the roof of the 1741 building, was re-erected as part of stables in the grounds of Redford House, also on Redford Road. It has since been converted into a house known as Drummond Scrolls taking its name from the large attached carved bracket scrolls, also from the surgical theatre of 1741. The house is category B-listed by Historic Scotland.
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