The Edinburgh Reporter April 2021

20 ART AND INNOVATION
The pandemic
looking back
Edinburgh Libraries scrapbooks will hold our memories
IF YOU HAVE a look at Edinburgh Collected
you will be transported back only a year to the
beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic with
pictures and memories of the impact of this
time on all our lives.
It was on Monday 23 March 2020 when
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced
that people in the UK must Stay at Home.
Apart from those working in essential key
industries and services, people did stay at home
to prevent the spread of the virus. Schools,
community centres, libraries, museums and
galleries in Edinburgh had already closed
during the previous week.
The public were permitted to leave home only
to shop for essentials, to get medical assistance,
to provide help or care for a vulnerable person,
or to take daily exercise.
The Edinburgh Collected scrapbook records
the impact of this time in the city, from deserted
streets and “closed” signs, to the little acts of
creativity and messages of thanks and positivity
that began to appear.
www.edinburghcollected.org/scrapbooks/271
Alexander Wood
1817 - 1884
Edinburgh Sketcher
Artists hosting a new online workshop
THE EDINBURGH Sketcher
Mark Kirkham and artist Julie
Galante are hosting a new
workshop on Saturday 24
April which combines
sketching and mixed media.
Join them for a full day of
creativity as you are guided
from initial ink drawings
through watercolours and
onto mixed media, using your
initial sketches to work
towards a finished original
artwork of an Edinburgh
cityscape.
During the day you will join
Mark and Julie for three Zoom
sessions during which each
will share the tips and
techniques they use in their
own art works. You will learn
how to use scale, perspective,
and various mediums and
textures to tell the story of
what you see around you,
building your confidence and
learning useful tricks of the
trade that you will go on to
use again and again.
In between the sessions
you are encouraged to
continue building on what
you’ve done, either heading
outside to find inspiration in
the city, or working from
reference photos of
Edinburgh which will be
provided for you.
Participants can order a kit
of materials when booking
(UK addresses only) or source
their own (a detailed list will
be provided).
Workshop without
materials - £95. Workshop
plus materials kit (including
UK shipping or local
Edinburgh pick up) - £150.
For more detail and to book
your place on this exclusive
course please visit:
www.edinburghsketcher.
com/workshops
City physician Alexander
Wood pioneered syringes
AN INDISPENSABLE piece of medical
technology, the hypodermic syringe, is
essential to the current mass Covid-19
vaccination programme now underway in
Edinburgh and throughout Scotland.
And its origins can be traced back to New
Town resident Alexander Wood, who in
1853 while living at 19 Royal Circus,
combined a glass syringe with a hypodermic
needle to inject morphine into patients who
could not take the medicine orally.
The practice of injections became
commonplace. His biographer and brotherin-law,
Reverend Thomas Brown, describes
his study of a bee sting as inspiration. Wood
published his paper “New Method of
Treating Neuralgia by the Direct Application
of Opiates to the Painful Points” in the
Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal (1855).
Wood is an incredibly interesting
character, in 1855 he was passed over for a
professorship at Edinburgh University
allegedly due to his critical treatise
“Homeopathy Unmasked”
which he had published in
1844. Wood was elected
President of the Royal College of
Physicians of Edinburgh from 1858
to 1861.
He retired from medicine at the
age of 55 in 1872 and among
other activities, he took up a role
as Chairman of the Edinburgh
Tramway Company. The tramway
system encountered strong
opposition. Wood’s biographer
Martin P McAdam
Wood’s Gravestone
reports that the upper classes who drove
their private carriages found “the street-rails
particularly objectionable”. He comments
that “the tramways were the most abused
and most used institution in Edinburgh”.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Variations of the syringe have been
around for some time, ancient Greeks used
variations of the modern technology to
apply medicines and ointments. Blaise
Pascal, the French inventor, developed a
modern syringe to conduct experiments.
Legend and indeed many legitimate
sources claim that Wood’s wife,
Rebecca Massey, was the first
known intravenous morphine
addict to die from an overdose.
Richard Davenport-Hines in his
book “The Pursuit of Oblivion”
disagrees: ‘It is a myth: she
outlived him, and survived until
1894”. Mrs Wood died aged 75,
eleven years after her husband,
and is buried in Dean Cemetery
in Edinburgh next to her
husband.
Martin P McAdam