St Mungo's College of Medicine, Glasgow (medical school: 1888-1947: Glasgow, Scotland)

St Mungo's College of Medicine, Glasgow was established in 1888 as a new independent medical college in Glasgow, Scotland. The College incorporated the Glasgow Royal Infirmary School of Medicine which had been set up in 1876 to counteract the effect of the opening of the Glasgow Western Infirmary on the Royal's teaching status. In 1947 St Mungo's College of Medicine was amalgamated with Glasgow University's Medical Faculty.

The college was housed in the buildings of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Following its amalgamation with the University of Glasgow in 1947 , its property was transferred to Glasgow Royal Infirmary and used to house Glasgow University's Medical Departments.

St Mungo's continued the policy of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary School of Medicine of allowing women to matriculate for a complete course of medical study and, during the period 1890-1892 , forty-three women received clinical instruction alongside male students. St Mungo's struggled to get enough students to enrol as it was not affiliated to a university and could not award its own degrees. Instead its students could only study for licences to practice medicine and surgery, which were awarded jointly by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, or for Irish or English qualifications. As a result, most students preferred to study for a Glasgow University degree and St Mungo's usually had less than 90 students matriculating each year.

In 1905, the Glasgow Royal Infirmary refused a request for financial assistance from the college. The Muirhead Trust, set up at the wish of Dr Thomas Muirhead to partly endow a college for the medical education of women, was persuaded to intervene. It agreed to endow St Mungo's College of Medicine if certain conditions were met. The name Muirhead should be associated with the college, there should be a connection with Glasgow University and the college would need to match the å£40,000 endowment the Muirhead Trust were going to make. Also all teaching should be open to women on equal terms.

The college always hoped that in time it would become an extra-mural college of the University of Glasgow but an attempt to affiliate with the university in 1905 failed. As the class sizes at Glasgow Western Infirmary got larger, Glasgow University became keen to re-establish links with the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and in 1910 the Chairs of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Surgery were transferred to the Glasgow Royal from the Glasgow Western. In 1911 , the St Mungo Chair of Surgery and Chair of Pathology and the Muirhead Chair of Medicine and Chair of Obstetrics & Gynaecology were created. Arrangements were made to have classes at Glasgow Royal Infirmary on venereal disease, diseases of the ear, diseases of the throat and nose and skin diseases. By 1930, five more clinical lectureships had been attached to Glasgow Royal Infirmary and St Mungo's College of Medicine became the centre for clinical and systematic instruction during the last 2 years of Glasgow University's medical curriculum.

Jacqueline Jenkinson, Michael Moss and Iain Russell, The Royal: the History of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, 1794-1994 (Glasgow (?): Bicentenary Committee on behalf of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, c1994)

From the guide to the Records of St Mungo's College of Medicine, 1888-1947, medical college, Glasgow, Scotland, 1891-1948, (Glasgow University Archive Services)