The Ulster Medical Society. Quo vadis?

This session will prove to be an important landmark in the life of our Society. Early next year we will take up residence in our new home in the extension to the Biology building. Over the years we have had several homes. The most famous, of course, was the Whitla Medical Institute, a building of great elegance and comfort, with which many of you were familiar and loved greatly. Dr. Allison recalls in "The Seeds of Time" that, "Sir William's great affection for the Society led him to donate a permanent home or Medical Institute to the Society in College Square North, which was then the University Square and College Gardens of the period. He spent £6,000 on its building and furnishing before it was declared open in 1902". Earlier meetings were held, first in a rented house in High Street and then in rooms in the basement of the new wing of the General Hospital in Frederick Street. In 1884, the Society moved again to the Museum buildings in College Square North. From there it was but a short step across the road to Sir William's magnificent new Medical Institute. Here the Society remained at home for the next sixty years or so. Alas, in the sixties, the rising cost of its upkeep, the threatened imposition of rates and the decreasing use made of the premises by Fellows who could no longer find parking space for their cars in the vicinity, forced council to relinquish the property and it was sold to the governors of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. This sad chapter in our history is vividly retold in Dr. Strain's excellent paper on the "History of the Ulster Medical Society". Since then we have been most generously