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The Scottish Intellect

The Scottish Intellect: Episode 4: Claret and Opium!

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Claret and Opium!

Episode 4

Episode 4: Claret and Opium!

BBC Radio Scotland - The Scottish Intellect, Claret and Opium!

Billy Kay explores the crucial role of medicine in the rise of the Scottish universities.

Billy Kay explores the role of medicine in the rise of Scottish universities, its influence in places like Philadelphia and links to the Dutch universities of Leyden and Utrecht.

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Billy Kay explores the role of medicine in the rise of Scottish universities - its influence in places like Philadelphia and links to the Dutch universities of Leyden and Utrecht. In the 18th and early 19th century the Scottish universities had a global reputation for the quality of its courses in medicine and development of related sciences like Botany and Chemistry. At one point, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow between them were producing 95% of Britain's doctors and exporting them all over the world. These medical men also made a lot of money - the famous obstetrician William Hunter e.g. became Glasgow University's greatest patron, while according to Professor Michael Moss many made fortunes trading in opium in the Far East. At least back then they had the excuse that the drug was widely in use for pain relief as a medication! 

Edinburgh in particular attracted students from America who were encouraged by the words of Benjamin Franklin..."You have great Advantage in going to study at Edinburgh at this Time, where there happens to be collected a Set of truly great Men, Professors of the several Branches of Knowledge, as have ever appeared in any Age or any country." 

Among those who came were men like Benjamin Rush, who went back to America and became a founder of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Billy visits the college and hears glowing testimonies to the influence of Scottish medicine on the development of medicine in the United States. Benjamin Rush summed it up perfectly when he wrote, "The two years I spent in Edinburgh I consider the most important in their influence upon my character and conduct of any period of my life."

One of the remarkable features of this period of the Scottish Enlightenment was the link between intellectual conversation and conviviality....with learned and drinking societies whiles becoming indistinguishable, as they were all "knee deep in claret" in the howffs of Auld Reekie. Looking back on his Edinburgh years, the writer James Boswell wrote, "Each glass of wine produced a flash of wit like gunpowder thrown into the fire - puff puff!" His mentor, the Scotophobe Dr Johnson, begged to differ. "Drinking does not improve conversation. It alters the mind so that you are pleased with any conversation." We follow Dr Johnson to St Andrews University, the only Scottish university not to thrive in this period, and wonder whether the university's welcome to the metropolitan savant was the beginning of its reputation as an anglicised institution within Scotland. Robert Crawford discusses the status of Scottish vernacular culture within our universities and points out that it was the Scots who established English as a university subject because of their anxieties to remove scotticisms from their written and spoken English! Curiously, an Edinburgh graduate John Witherspoon attempted to do exactly the same with "americanisms" in the speech of students at Princeton.

Back in Edinburgh and St Andrews, English students today testify to the fact they take up Scottish culture while they are up here, becoming doyens of the Reeling Society and in the case of Siobhan Talbott becoming a devoted shinty player! Siobhan also studied Scottish history at St Andrews and is now teaching at Manchester University, where she teaches the history but misses the shinty!

Billy also follows in the footsteps of Boswell to Utrecht in the Netherlands where hundreds of Scots aristocrats studied law before setting off on the Grand Tour. They brought expertise in law and medicine back to Scotland, showing the global nature of university learning throughout the ages.

An Odyssey Production for Radio Scotland.

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