Royal Public Dispensary of Edinburgh

In the eighteenth century, as now, infirmaries and hospitals were expensive to set up and run. They allowed the growth of study and teaching but the throughput of patients was small and the costly institutions required heavy support from philanthropists. A cheaper and more extensive form of care was required and this was delivered in the form of the dispensary, the first of which in England was the General Dispensary in Aldersgate, London, set up in 1770.

Dispensaries were served in large degree by free student labour, and costs were kept down too through a high (working-class) patient turnover. Dispensaries would come to spread across Scotland's cities too, delivering medical advice and simple treatments.

In the early 1770s, Andrew Duncan (1744-1828) was offering extra-academical lectures and instruction for medical students in Edinburgh. Persons too poor to afford medical treatment were given free advice and their individual cases were presented to medical students. No out-patient care was given at the Royal Infirmary at this time, and so poor patients came along to Duncan's sessions instead. Indeed so many turned up that he proposed the establishment of a public dispensary in the city.

Edinburgh's Royal Public Dispensary (and Vaccine Institution), proposed by Duncan and founded in 1776, was probably the first dispensary in Scotland, though there is an unsubstantiated reference to one in Dundee in 1735. The Royal Public Dispensary was said to be 'conservative but highly respected' and operated in the city without rival until 1815 when the Edinburgh New Town Dispensary was established. Both were free. The Kelso Dispensary started by the Earl of Haddington in 1777 was free by letter. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century other general dispensaries were set up in Edinburgh - in the Fountainbridge area in 1830 and 1870, in Richmond Street and Rose Street in 1875, and in Marshall Street in 1878. Glasgow had a Public Dispensary by 1874.

From the guide to the Records of the Royal Public Dispensary of Edinburgh, 1778-1964, (Edinburgh University Library)