REMOTE AND RURAL MEMORIES Highland medicine in the mid 19th century

Life in the highlands and islands in the 1800s was far from easy. The highlands potato famine, which first struck in 1846 and continued over subsequent decades, brought extreme poverty and starvation. The highland clearances, which had begun in earnest in the late 1700s, involved the displacement of tenants by landlords to make way for large-scale cattle farming. Increasingly, landlords ruled in absentia, managing large districts of the highlands and islands from their homes in Edinburgh, London or even overseas. Earlier notions of local paternalistic landlords who would protect and watch over their tenants were becoming a distant memory.

In the midst of these challenges, in 1850, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (the College) appointed a committee to report on