SIR DOMINIC CORRIGAN (1802-1880)

Pioneering Practitioner and Researcher in Medicine

Student (Lay College) and Medical Assistant c. 1812-20;

Consulting Physician

 

In the Maynooth University website Sir Dominic Corrigan is among the select group of four who represent the research tradition on the campus, going back to its establishment as an educational site in 1795 (the other three are the priest-scientist Nicholas Callan, the classicist and college President Charles Russell, and the late professor of English Language and Literature, Barbara Hayley).

In fact, Corrigan's education that the short-lived lay college may only have been for a handful of years, but his greater contribution may have been to advance the standard of medical attendance at the college, where he served as an apprentice to Dr. Edward Talbot O'Kelly for a number of years. Corrigan was still a teenager, the Leitrim-born O'Kelly in his early thirties, and still single (he would marry a member of the Chamberlain family in 1827, and create a dynasty of medical practitioners that would serve Maynooth College until the dawn of the twentieth century)

From Maynooth Corrigan went to Scotland for his formal medical education and in 1825 he received his M.D. from the University of Edinburgh. He then became a physician at Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, where he began his clinical-pathological work.

In 1829 Corrigan married Joanna Woodlock, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Riscrea, and an older sister of Bartholomew Woodlock, then just ten years of age, who would become President of All Hallows and Rector of the Catholic University before being appointed Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise in 1877, unusually for the time retiring at the age of 75 in 1895. The Corrigans had six children, three girls and three boys.

Over the next forty years, he would be associated with most of the leading medical establishments in Dublin, particularly those caring for the less advantaged including the Sick-Poor Institution of Dublin and the House of Industry hospitals. In 1847 Corrigan was appoint physician-in-ordinary to the Queen in Ireland at the same time as he was battling the medical fallout from the Great Famine. Two years later he was given an honorary MD from Trinity College. 

In 1866 he was created a baronet - of Cappagh and Inniscorrig in the County of Dublin and of Merrion Square in the City of Dublin, partly as a reward for his services as Commissioner of Education for many years (he had also been prominent in the affairs of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, the Dublin Pathological Society and the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society, serving as President of all three, as well as being active in the support of Daniel O'Connell nominated a Senator of the Queen's Colleges and their vice-chancellor in the 1870s). His  support for temperance and Sunday closing (of pubs) is thought to have antagonised his constituents and alcohol companies and resulted in his service as M.P. being confined to one term (1870-4)

Corrigan died at Merrion Square, Dublin, on 1 February 1880, having suffered a stroke the previous December, and is buried in the crypt of St. Andrew's Church, Westland Row. The Corrigan Ward, a cardiology ward in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital is named in his honour. Part of his family crest is also part of the Beaumont Hospital crest.

In 1846 Corrigan's application to become a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland was blocked. In 1855 he got around this opposition by sitting the college's entrance exam with the newly qualified doctors. He became a fellow in 1856, and in 1859 was elected president, the first Catholic to hold the position; he was re-elected president an unprecedented four times. The following document is taken from the RCPI website.