John Woodroffe founded the Anatomy school in Margaret Street, Cork and the exhibition will examine his life as a teacher of anatomy, a passionate devotee of epic art and a successful and committed surgeon.

Using contemporary newspaper reports and other sources, the exhibition brings John Woodroffe to life as a teacher of enormous presence, a surgeon, an intellectual leader and controversial figure in Cork during the 1820s and 1830s. It charts the growth in medical education in the city such that by the time Woodroffe left in 1841, there were four medical schools employing seventeen teachers and supplying students to all the great medical schools in Dublin, Edinburgh and London.  For the first time, it shows a portrait of John Woodroffe and quotes at length from his lectures and letters.

The exhibition reveals the human bones excavated in Cove Street in 1980 and demonstrates that they were part of a teaching skeleton, probably from Woodroffe’s Cove Street school, and compares the copper hinges and nails that held them together with a female skeleton carved by John Hogan out of pinewood when he was a student at Woodroffe’s school. On a series of 8 panels, it demonstrates how anatomical illustration styles changed as the century wore on, and how the influence of the Cork anatomists persisted through multiple editions of their work.

For the first time, it presents a series of annual reports from the South Charitable Infirmary from 1814 to 1839 which show in detail how hospitals were run in those times and how they were funded. This is a must for anyone with an interest in Cork’s intellectual history, particularly in that vibrant period between the ending of the Napoleonic Wars and the founding of Queens College Cork.

The exhibition runs from September 16th October 3rd at the Jennings Gallery, Brookfield Health Sciences Complex, UCC.

Picture:  John Woodroffe

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