Teaching and Demonstrating

• One of the ways of alluding to the wider medical community in prints of individual practitioners was by portraying the sitter engaged in the act of teaching or demonstrating.
• Edinburgh was one of the major centres for medical education across Europe in this period. The foundation of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1505, and the Royal College of Physicians in 1681, set the stage for the foundation of the Medical School in 1726, in which the Fellows of the RCPE played an important role. In 1729, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was opened as a teaching facility. With the additional establishment of the Royal Medical Society, a student society, in 1737, Edinburgh came to be one of the most renowned cities for medical education. Edinburgh-educated medical practitioners travelled Britain and Europe making reputations for themselves as renowned and talented professionals, such as the Hunter brothers.