Speech on Receiving an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, 13th February 2016
A Dhaoine Uailse,
A Aíonna Oirirce,
Is mian liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl do Chomhairle Choláiste Ríoga na Máinleá in Éirinn as an Chomhaltacht Oinigh seo a bhronnadh orm. Glacaim leis go humhal, agus mé aireach ar na Comhaltaí a tháinig romham, a raibh ina measc Iar-Uachtaráin na hÉireann ar fad, agus daoine an-ionraic ar nór Nelson Mandela, an Mháthair Treasa agus Seamus Heaney. Is mór an pribhléid dom é a bheith luaite i measc comhluadar chomh clúiteach sin de ghairmithe díograiseach, agus aithním éiteas an Choláiste atá cuimsithe in bhur manna "Consilio Manuque".
[Ladies and Gentlemen,
Distinguished guests,
May I express my gratitude to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for conferring on me the distinction of Honorary Fellow. In accepting this honour, I am mindful of the distinguished line of Honorary Fellows of this College, which comprises all the previous Presidents of Ireland, but also such figures of outstanding integrity as Nelson Mandela and Seamus Heaney. To join such a renowned group of dedicated professionals in an honorary capacity is indeed a privilege, and I am very conscious of the ethos of the College, encapsulated in your motto “Consilio Manuque” – Scholarship and Dexterity.]
I appreciate the honour you confer on me, not least because the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland occupies a unique place in the heart of this city and indeed this country. Ever since the foundation of the College, in the late 18th century, so many of its fellows, staff and students have taken a passionate interest, and often an active part, in the debates of ideas, movements, and events of their day.
Sylvester O’Halloran, for example, who was one of the driving forces behind the creation of this College, campaigned for an academy that would have integrity of scholarship in dealing with the Irish Annals. In his Insula Sacra (1770), he denounced the distortions of Irish History presented in MacPherson’s famous Poems, and expressed his indignation at how, as he wrote:
“Even in these modern days of erudition and curiosity, we have seen such monstrous accounts of this country and people, as are truly astonishing.”
Centuries–old institutions such as this College are important, then, not just because of the wealth of expertise they make available to us, but also through the depth of history they summon up, and the connection they offer with inspiring events and people from our past. As we are gathered to commemorate the Royal Charter which established this College, on 11th February 1784, and as you conclude three days of intense discussions on surgical matters, it might be a good time to pause and evoke some of the great people and critical events that left their mark (indeed at times very concretely, in the form of bullet holes) on this venerable institution.
An exercise in historical imagination seems all the more propitious as we are commemorating this year the centenary of one of the foundational events in the history of our state, the 1916 Easter Rising. The imagination is prompted, too, by the knowledge that these very settings were host to one of the Rising’s most emblematic episodes.
If I may, however, start upstream of Easter week 1916 and recall the memory of a former President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Sir Thomas Myles. The path of engagement followed by Professor Myles, the way he responded to events, both as a patriot and as a doctor, sheds light on the complexity of the political views, motives and identity of those who took part in the events of Ireland’s revolutionary decade (1912 – 1923).
Myles was a prominent supporter of Home Rule. His campaign for the Presidency of the College of Surgeons stirred much controversy, his opponents portending that he would “associate the College with the promoters of anarchy and discord.” Sir Thomas Myles was also an enthusiastic yachtsman whose name remains associated with the Kilcoole gun running of the summer 1914.
The story of how hundreds of rifles destined to the Irish Volunteers were smuggled from Hamburg to Howth by Mary Spring Rice and Molly and Erskine Childers on board the Asgard is well known. What is less known, however, is that some of those rifles were offloaded onto Conor O’Brien’s famous boat, the Kelpie, and later transferred to Myles’s yacht, the Chotah, who delivered them at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, on 1st August 1914. There Myles was met by a group of Irish Volunteers commanded by Seán Fitzgibbon and Seán T. O. Ceallaigh, who later became – God moves in mysterious ways – President of Ireland and an Honorary Fellow of this College.
Yet, as a loyal supporter of Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sir Thomas Myles was no partisan of insurrection. He served as consulting surgeon to the British forces in Ireland throughout the duration of WWI. His path crossed that of the Easter 1916 insurgents in the most fortuitous of ways, as he happened to be passing by when the commandant of the Irish Citizen Army detachment who attempted to take Dublin Castle shot dead the policeman on duty at the gate. Myles unsuccessfully tried to save the Constable’s life and then, realising that a major event was underway in Dublin, he proceeded to Richmond Hospital, where he spent the week tending to the wounded from all sides.
The Royal College of Surgeons itself was, of course, as June Shannon put it, “an important if unwitting participant in the historic events of Easter Week 1916”, taken as it was by a contingent of about 120 men and women led by Commandant Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz of the Irish Citizen Army. The story goes that the group managed to take the College easily as the porter had to open the door to RCSI Fellow John Freeman Knott, an “elderly, erudite and eccentric scholar” who had arrived for his daily visit to the College, totally oblivious to the chaos, gunfire and armed groups of men and women all around him.
Once inside the college, the insurgents built barricades with items of furniture and books from the library in the entrance hall. The immediate concern for the women – in particular for Citizen Army member Madeline ffrench-Mullen, and her assistants, Nora O'Daly, Brigid Murtagh and Rosie Hackett – was to establish a First-Aid station in the large College Hall where we had our drinks reception earlier.
The robust walls of the College made of it an excellent stronghold, impervious to the fire from the British army troops positioned on the roof of the nearby Shelbourne Hotel. On Sunday morning, as the garrison inside the College were getting ready for a final assault, they received, instead, word of the surrender from Cumann na mBan member Elizabeth O'Farrell. The tricolour brought from the GPO by one of the ICA female combatants, Margaret Skinnider, which had flown over the College for a week, was lowered and a white flag hoisted in its place.
It was discovered afterwards that no serious damage had been done to the RCSI during the insurrection, with the exception, it seems, of a life-sized portrait of Queen Victoria, which had been ripped from its frame.
It is interesting to note that many of the casualties from the College of Surgeons[1] and from other fighting sites across the city were taken care of in various hospitals by people associated with the Royal College of Surgeons. We know today that Sir Thomas Myles and other RCSI graduates and licentiates such as Michael Francis Cox and John Stephen Mc Ardle, for example, ignored demands from the British authorities to report any “suspicious” wounds.
In her paper entitled “Surgeons and Insurgents”, Historian Mary McAuliffe also recounts how James Connolly, who had been badly wounded during the GPO battle, was cared for, after the surrender, by “a white haired elderly man”, Surgeon Tobin, who was a Fellow of the RCSI. Nora Connolly reported how she heard her father refer to Tobin as “this wonderful man”. After Connolly’s death, Richard Francis Tobin and writer George Russell (Æ) made sure financial assistance was provided to the impoverished Connolly family.
While they may have differed in their political views, these Irish doctors were deeply committed to medical ethics and humanist principles – to human rights, as we would call them today. Many of them also grappled with the notions of freedom, equality and justice that stirred Irish society at the turn of the last century.
More recently, a similar concern for justice and human rights, not just in Ireland, but in the wider world, was remarkably demonstrated by the Royal College of Surgeons through the role it played in the anti-Apartheid movement.
As you know very well, the rise of Apartheid in South Africa, from the late 1940s onwards, imposed a shocking, institutionalised, form of racial segregation throughout every sector of society. South Africa’s Indian minority were, among others, directly affected by restrictions placed on access to higher education for the “non-white” population.
In the early 1950s, the Royal College of Surgeons provided for the annual admission of a quota of South African Indian students. This was due in part to the commitment of the College’s Registrar, Professor William Norman Rae, who served in the post from 1938 to 1962, and who implemented this policy in direct response to the implementation of Apartheid.
A number of prominent student activists of the anti-Apartheid movement thus developed personal and academic connections to Ireland. This important chapter in the history of the College was acknowledged by Nelson Mandela in his acceptance speech to this assembly, when he said:
“During the dark days of apartheid your College provided places for many South Africans who were excluded by racist laws from medical schools of their own country.....Through these doctors you are making an inestimable contribution to the healthcare needs of our people.”
Interestingly, most of these Indian students were of Muslim confession, belonging to the Ismaili Shia community. Thus the Royal College of Surgeons has played a significant historical role in fostering the steady development of Ireland's Muslim population since the 1950s. The trend accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, with the arrival of postgraduate students from Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Sudan.
This year, we are also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Penang Medical College in Malaysia, of which I am proud to be the Patron. Established in 1996 with a view to addressing the shortage of doctors in Malaysia and other South East Asian countries, this joint educational venture between the Penang State government, NUI, UCD and RCSI provides an excellent example of beneficial international cooperation, whereby state-sponsored students are enabled to study abroad before they return to their country to complete their clinical training and then serve there as highly qualified doctors. I am also delighted to note that the graduation of the first class of medical students at Perdana University, Kuala Lumpur, will be celebrated in Kuala Lumpur in June of this year.
Thus, for decades before we began speaking of Ireland as a multicultural society, the Royal College of Surgeons has been a highly successful multicultural microcosm, providing the best of medical education to students of all backgrounds. It is an institution that has taken the good name of Ireland to the four corners of the globe, thanks to its extensive network of alumni. Indeed for me, one of the joys of travelling around the world as President has been to meet the many graduates of this College who proudly tell me that they count Ireland as their second home.
A commitment to internationalism and to human rights, as well as to the public world, can be seen in the pioneering careers of so many of your peers over the decades, including figures such as Dr. Kevin Cahill who joined this College in 1969 as Chair of the Tropical Diseases Department. I had the pleasure to present Kevin with a President’s Distinguished Service Award in 2014, in acknowledgement of his important contribution to global medicine and to the public and cultural life of Ireland and the United States.
Dear Friends,
This year, as we commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, we are invited to rekindle and take on further the unfulfilled promises of equality and justice that animated the founders of our state. As we consider the Proclamation of 1916 and the idealism that inspired it, we are called on to continue the work of crafting, together, a Republic of which we can all be proud, a Republic that is responsive to the great challenges of our time.
This College, with its great tradition of humanism, its record of educational excellence, and its globalised perspective, has a crucial contribution to make. Indeed when we consider the great challenges of humanity in this new century, it is clear that the realisation of the right to health, and all the other basic human rights that relate to it – such as adequate housing, nutritious food, decent working conditions and a clean environment – remain of fundamental importance.
The members of this College have played and continue to play a prominent role in our national public discourse. You have shown a willingness to bring your expertise and experience into the public space where policy is debated and developed. As we consider how Ireland might achieve the highest quality of health service, your intellectual contribution will be essential – but, may I suggest, it is also essential that considerations of different policy options are predicated upon an uncompromising vindication of the right of all of our citizens to access adequate healthcare.
The best way towards the realisation of this most fundamental of human rights, as well as all other essential social goods, here as in developing countries, is, I very strongly believe, through the nurturing of a robust public service.
The right to health is also inextricably linked to ethical questions of equality, respect for diversity and human dignity. This institution must continue to live up to its proud tradition of humanism and concern for human rights. All of you who are associated with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland are fortunate to be able to draw on the great examples set by so many of your forbearers, and on a core of tested professional values, as you contribute to making Ireland the Real Republic of which our founders dreamed.
Mar fhocal scoir, is mian liom buíochas a ghlabháil libh go léir as an fíorchaoin fáilte a d'fhear sibh romham anseo inniu, agus as ligint dom páirt a ghlacadh sa traidisiún breá lena n-ainmníonn sibh Uachtarán mar Chomhalta Oinigh in bhur gColáiste Ríoga.
[May I thank you all, once again, for welcoming me here tonight, and allowing me to join your great tradition of Presidential Fellows.]
Go n-éirí go geal libh ‘s go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.
[1] With the exception of Margaret Skinnider who, although badly injured, insisted on staying inside the College until the end.