Anderson Stuart recruits pioneer Faculty staff from Edinburgh Medical School
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
To strengthen the Faculty's teaching staff, Anderson Stuart turned to his colleagues from the Edinburgh Medical School and recruited Alexander MacCormick, Robert Scot Skirving, James Thomas Wilson and David Arthur Welsh. Anderson Stuart had been in the same graduating class as Scot Skirving and MacCormick (along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Scot Skirving came to Australia in 1883 and took up the post of Medical Superintendant at the Prince Alfred Hospital, becoming Lecturer in Clinical Medicine in the Faculty in 1889. MacCormick came to Australia in 1883 too and joined the Faculty as a Demonstrator in Anatomy and Physiology. In 1887 Dr James Thomas Wilson also took up the position of Demonstrator. Three years later, Anderson Stuart recommended that Wilson be appointed to the Foundation Challis Chair of Anatomy.
David Arthur Welsh was appointed to the Foundation Professorship of Pathology at the close of the century and Welsh took up the appointment the following year. Wilson and Welsh laid the foundations for the museum teaching collections, and were more active in research than Anderson Stuart could be with his central administrative responsibilities. The presence of these Scottish graduates in key posts in the faculty promoted development of a medical training programme along the lines of the Scottish model, which at the time was considered the most academically rigorous in the Empire. As a result, the Sydney medical qualification was rapidly accepted as being equivalent to those gained from the British Universities.
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