Hansard

I start by thanking the colleagues who supported this motion and the colleagues who are in the chamber this afternoon. I am glad to contribute to the debate.

I also take the opportunity to welcome representatives from Edinburgh medical school and the University of Edinburgh who join us today, and to thank them for and congratulate them on their sterling work, because Edinburgh medical school 300—EMS 300—has been a massive success.

When we mark this 300th anniversary of formal medical teaching at the University of Edinburgh, we do more than just celebrate a date in a calendar; we recognise that, over three centuries, Scotland has shaped global medicine, informed scientific thought and trained generations of clinicians whose work has touched lives far beyond the borders of Scotland.

This milestone invites pride, absolutely, but it also invites honesty, reflection and a renewed sense of responsibility for the future. In 1726, when the faculty of medicine was formally established, the University of Edinburgh set in motion a model of medical education that blended rigorous scientific inquiry with clinical observation—a real first, although medical schools had existed in the Netherlands earlier. It brought the scientific principle to medicine. That approach helped to make our capital one of the leading centres during the enlightenment. It drew students from around the world—from Europe, North America and Asia—and influenced the creation of medical schools around the world.

The history that we commemorate in this year is not just a procession of success. As the organisers of the EMS 300 programme have emphasised, the anniversary compels us to recognise the struggles, the exclusions and the inequalities that sit alongside all of those achievements. One of the most powerful elements of that is the role of women in the story of Edinburgh medicine. I think of Heen Shamaz, a final-year student who, on the day that she passed—although she did not know it at the time—her final examinations, gave a lecture in old college, which is a strange building from which, for more than 200 years, women were excluded. She stood alongside distinguished colleagues Professor Lorna Marson and Dr Lesley Dawson, and they reflected on the long fight for equality in medical education.

They reminded us of the Edinburgh seven—Sophia Jex-Blake and her peers—who, in the 1870s, were accepted into medical school only to face harassment, violent obstruction and, ultimately, the denial of the right to graduate. Yet they persisted: they studied abroad when the University of Edinburgh would not grant them degrees. They laid foundations that their own country’s university would fully acknowledge only many decades later.

When Edinburgh medical school celebrated its 250th anniversary, the official catalogue singled out a

“galaxy of talented and famous men”.

There was no mention of the women whose perseverance had opened wider the doors to the profession. How fitting it is that the 300-year celebration deliberately gives prominence to those who had been written out of the story, from the Edinburgh seven to pioneers such as Gertrude Herzfeld, whose leadership helped establish paediatrics as its own discipline; to the present generation, represented by Dr Dawson, who is the first female secretary of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; and, most importantly, to today’s students, who are the most diverse in the school’s history.

The speakers’ message was not only about the past injustice. At the lecture, they spoke about imposter syndrome, about the subtle but persistent barriers that remain, and about the importance of mentorship and of representation, because, as Ms Shamaz so cleverly and succinctly put it:

“You can’t be what you can’t see.”

They reminded us that commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion are not an administrative duty but a clinical one, because the future of medicine is not about treating disease but about understanding people.

As we congratulate the university and all those who are involved in curating the diverse, thoughtful programme of events—from lectures to alumni reunions and public outreach activities—we also need to recognise Edinburgh medical school’s immense contribution to Scotland’s health, economy and reputation, because its graduates have shaped global surgery. They have pioneered diagnostics. They have advanced public health. They have helped guide health policy at home and abroad. For 300 years, the institution has stood at the intersection of learning, discovery and service. The spirit of collaboration, diversity and ingenuity is alive and well, and that has been a key part of EMS 300 celebrations. School of art students have produced an EMS 300 tartan. There are poems about the school’s history. Events have been put on by the medical school throughout the year.

The next generations of Charles Darwins, Wong Fung Chus and Sophia Jex-Blakes are already being moulded. They are the difference makers who will go on to save lives, push boundaries and break those boundaries. I invite the Parliament to join me in recognising the truly extraordinary legacy of Edinburgh medical school and in wishing its staff, its students and its alumni every success as its goes into its next 300 years.