The subjects of the Divinity lectures for the Junior year were arranged in reference to the controversies which were most prevalent in the Irish Church in the year 1833, and also in reference to the special theological aptitudes of Dr. O’Brien. He was peculiarly fitted to treat of the evidences of natural and revealed religion, and to reply to the objections to both which were then current. Those who remember his prelections can bear testimony to the wonderful ability and skill with which he dealt with the infidel controversy of his time, and the light which he threw upon the well-known arguments of Bishop Butler. The Socinian controversy at that period occupied the serious attention of the Irish clergy, and it was necessary that all the young ministers of the Church should be prepared to deal with the arguments of the Unitarian when they entered upon their duties as curates.
Prior to 1814 the Regius Professor of Divinity held no public examination in the subjects of his course. In 1813 Dean Graves, who at that time held the office, submitted to the Board a plan for the improvement of Divinity lectures, and a new Royal Statute was obtained regulating the duties of the Professor. He was bound to deliver prelections during term, but they were practically confined to the first week in Michaelmas term, the first and second weeks in Hilary term, and the first week in Easter term. He was also bound to hold an examination once a-year, open to Bachelors of Arts. The subjects of this examination were fixed by Statute. On the first morning it was the Old Testament, the first afternoon the New; on the second morning in Ecclesiastical History, and the second afternoon in the Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England. In 1814 the Board instituted prizes at this examination, which was otherwise voluntary. On the first occasion thirty graduates entered their names for the examination, but only five attended, and it ended in only three or four highly prepared Divinity students presenting themselves each year for a searching examination in an extended course. In 1859 these Divinity prizes were enlarged into Theological Exhibitions, two of which, of £60 and £40 a-year, tenable for three years, are now awarded as the result of this examination, greatly enlarged and extended by the addition of selections from the writings of the Fathers and specified portions of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Prizes also at the end of the first Divinity year, called after the name of Archbishop King, were founded in 1836. Both these stimulants to theological study, aided by annual prizes at examinations held by the Professors of Biblical Greek and of Ecclesiastical History, have very widely extended the reading of the best class of Divinity students. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity are now required to pass an examination in the whole of the extended range of theological subjects required of candidates for the Exhibitions; but as those who seek Divinity degrees are generally clergymen who are engaged in the duties of their calling, they are allowed to divide the examination into parts and to pass it in detail instead of on one occasion. Few of the modern arrangements have been so successful as this. By directing and encouraging a wide course of theological reading among the younger clergy, it has produced an excellent effect, and the popularity of the arrangement is manifested by the large increase in the number of candidates for the B.D. degree by examination.
It would give an incomplete account of the preparation of candidates for Holy Orders in Trinity College, Dublin, if we were to omit the mention of the important training which the College Theological Society affords to the students. Once in each week during term the members meet under the presidency of either the Regius Professor or of Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity; essays on theological subjects, or on one of the important religious questions of the day, are read by the students in turn; a debate upon the essay follows, which is watched over and moderated by the President, who, at the conclusion, makes such observations as he thinks fit. The students are in this manner practised in thoughtful and carefully prepared composition, and in extempore speaking; and the great benefits derived by Divinity students from this voluntary society are universally admitted—advantages which have been mainly due to the unremitting care of the late Bishop Butcher, formerly Regius Professor, and his successors in that chair.
The Medical School.—The marked and rapid growth of the Medical School of the University of Dublin has been one of the most notable events in its history during the nineteenth century. Although it was in existence in Trinity College since 1711, it was only in 1786 that it was placed on its present footing by an Act of the Irish Parliament, which united the College of Physicians with Trinity College in the joint management of the instruction given in this school. Five of the teachers are appointed by the Provost and Senior Fellows, and four (designated King’s Professors) by the College of Physicians, the Trustees of Sir Patrick Dun’s estates. This Statute further required that all who shall be in attendance on medical lectures, whether students of Trinity College or extern students in Medicine, shall be matriculated by the Senior Lecturer.
For the first fifteen years these matriculations averaged only 4·7 each year. The numbers gradually increased, until in the years 1809-1813, inclusive, the average reached 41·4 each year; from 1814 to 1824 they rose to an average of 66·5. In the next quinquennial period they increased to the large number of 90·8 annually. In the years from 1831 to 1835 the average fell to 63, and in the following two years the number barely exceeded 28 each year. The great increase of medical students in the period between 1814 and 1835 is to be attributed mainly to the eminence of the University Professor of Anatomy and Chirurgery—James Macartney[101]—a man of the greatest powers both as an anatomist, a biologist, and surgical teacher. On his ceasing to hold the Professorship, the number of students in the Medical School fell to what it had been before his appointment; and having continued at a low level for thirty years, it suddenly rose to an average of nearly 80 entrances in 1864, in which year Doctor Edward H. Bennett, the present Professor of Surgery, was appointed to the office of University Anatomist—an office which had, after being in abeyance for a century, been revived in 1861. From this time the numbers have gradually risen until they amounted to more than they were in the most flourishing period of Doctor Macartney’s teaching. Doctor Macartney held the Chair of Anatomy for twenty-four years, until July, 1837, when he resigned the office, very much because he was unwilling to submit to the rules laid down by the governing body of the College. In the year 1834 a complaint was made to the Provost and Senior Fellows, by the other Professors of the Medical School, that he had fixed his lectures at an hour, from 3 to 4 p.m., which interfered with those of the other Professors of that school. In December, 1835, the Board informed him that they would permit him to continue his lectures during that session at the hour which he had announced, but that this privilege would not be further continued. In November, 1836, Dr. Macartney persisted in lecturing at 3 o’clock. He was ordered by the Board to lecture at another hour, and this order was conveyed also to the College of Physicians. Dr. Macartney persisted; and the Board took the advice of counsel as to their powers, and, as a result, they ordered the Anatomy House to be closed from 3 to 4 o’clock. In the end the Professor yielded. But another cause of dispute soon rose. In April, 1836, the Board received a letter from the Registrar of the School of Physic, which stated that Doctor Macartney wished to have his lectures advertised as being two in Anatomy and two in Surgery each week. This was held by the Board to be insufficient, inasmuch as the University of Edinburgh required five lectures in each of these subjects every week, and would require from the Dublin Professors certificates to that effect. Notwithstanding the remonstrance of the Provost and Senior Fellows, Doctor Macartney persisted in his advertisement. Doctor Sandes, one of the Senior Fellows, undertook at their request to write to the Professor in the hope that he would be able to induce him to change his decision, but his attempt was not followed by success. A case was laid before Mr. Pennefather, K.C., and as a result of his opinion, on November 26, 1836, Doctor Macartney was required to deliver five lectures in each week at one o’clock during the session. On July 13, 1837, he resigned the Professorship—four years before his tenure of office would otherwise have expired.
In consequence of his quarrel with the authorities of Trinity College, all Doctor Macartney’s valuable collection of preparations became the property of the University of Cambridge. That learned body agreed with Macartney that he should transfer his collections to them in consideration of an annuity of £100 for a period not exceeding ten years. In making arrangements with Doctor Harrison, his successor, the Board took care to renew the understanding which they had made in 1802 with Dr. Hartigan, but which they had, through an oversight, omitted to establish on Doctor Macartney’s election—that all such preparations should become the property of the College.
It should be added, in justice to Dr. Harrison, who succeeded Macartney, and who was an excellent human anatomist and a most painstaking and attractive lecturer, that the great falling off of medical students in his time must be attributed to many causes beyond his control: first, the refusal of the Irish College of Surgeons to receive certificates of his lectures, very much through professional jealousy; secondly, the opening of large medical schools in the central parts of England, which drew away all the Welsh students who had before that time come to Dublin in considerable numbers, and the opening of the Ledwich School of Medicine in Dublin; and thirdly, to the institution of the Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway, which retained in those towns the students in Medicine who had previously been in the habit of coming to Dublin for lectures.
The old Anatomy House, situated between the College Park and the Fellows’ Garden, was a small and inconvenient building. It became altogether unsuited to the numbers attending Doctor Macartney’s classes. In 1815 space was made for them by the removal of the wax models from the room in which they had been placed to that over it, and a small building was erected in the Fellows’ Garden adjacent to the old house. This was but a temporary expedient, for we find that in 1820 the floor of the lecture-room was reported to be in a dangerous condition, and the Board directed that, in future, lectures in Anatomy and Chemistry should be delivered in the public lecture-room in No. 22 of the Library Square. A committee was appointed to arrange for a new site for the Medical School. That which was at first fixed upon was at the east side of the Fellows’ Garden, between the old Anatomy House and Nassau Street; but on further consideration it was changed to the ground, hitherto the Bowling Green, at the remote extremity of the College Park. On April 1, 1823, estimates were laid before the Board for the building of an anatomical and chemical theatre on the above site. The estimates ranged between £3,980 and £5,350, and a contract was made for the work. Macartney seems to have taken a great interest in the selecting of the site. Thus we find him writing to the Registrar, Dr. Phipps, from Newry, in May, 1822:—
“As our interest, and that of our successors, and the future prosperity of the Medical School, will be affected by the situation and mode of erecting of the building intended for the Anatomical and Chemical instruction, we beg leave to lay our opinions before the Board on this subject. (1.) With respect to situation, we consider any part of that side of the Park next Nassau Street as being eligible, but if we were to select a particular place on this line it would be opposite to Kildare Street, showing the front towards the street. The Bowling Green we think a disadvantageous situation, as being damp, and the entrance being through a private yard, which has been proposed by the architect, we think would be highly injurious to the respectability of the School. The distance of the Bowling Green would be very inconvenient to students in Arts, of whom our classes are chiefly composed. The above objection equally applies to the side of the Park next Brunswick Street. (2.) We are of opinion that, to make the buildings distinct, however contiguous in situation to each other, would much facilitate and simplify the plans, and expedite their erection, and would add greatly to the respectability of both establishments; as the shape and disposition of the apartments in the two houses might be different, we are satisfied that less expense would be incurred by adopting a separate plan for each house.”
And while the building was being erected he wrote about the light, sending the following characteristic letter to the Board (29th March, 1823):—