Medical Heraldry
This week we have celebrated our hospitals and medical workers by showing the various coats of arms recorded by Hospitals and and Hospital Boards, mostly following the creation of the National Health Service, represented in the dexter half of the shields.
These arms were recorded for the Glasgow Western Hospital Board in September 1949 with increasingly complex and inventive differences in bordures for 29 hospitals in the West of Scotland. The bordures include "potent Or and Purpure" and "Vairy Argent and Purpure" so people must have had fun trying to think of new ones. The Board used the arms without a bordure and we can see that the sinister is crammed with West of Scotland symbols like the City of Glasgow coat of arms, the Stewart fess chequy for Renfrewshire etc.
Here are the arms are those of the Eastern Hospital Board, based in Dundee, and recorded in 1949 following the creation of the National Health Service.
Again we see what is clearly a generic dexter symbolic of the new National Health Service and the "angels" of its nurses. The sinister shows Dundee's lilies in their vase beside the Agnus Dei of Perth, the lion passant of the Ogilvies, the Atholl barry of six etc.
The next heraldic "shout-out" was to the staffs of our hospitals in the North East of Scotland. The North Eastern Hospitals Board, based as the sinister chief shows, in Aberdeen, recorded these arms with fifteen different bordures for the area's hospitals in 1949.
There are several other NHS Hospital Boards recorded in the Register and if we count all the bordures, this makes these Boards the largest single generic group of armorial bearings.
These arms were recorded for the Glasgow Western Hospital Board in September 1949 with increasingly complex and inventive differences in bordures for 29 hospitals in the West of Scotland. The bordures include "potent Or and Purpure" and "Vairy Argent and Purpure" so people must have had fun trying to think of new ones. The Board used the arms without a bordure and we can see that the sinister is crammed with West of Scotland symbols like the City of Glasgow coat of arms, the Stewart fess chequy for Renfrewshire etc.
Here are the arms are those of the Eastern Hospital Board, based in Dundee, and recorded in 1949 following the creation of the National Health Service.
Again we see what is clearly a generic dexter symbolic of the new National Health Service and the "angels" of its nurses. The sinister shows Dundee's lilies in their vase beside the Agnus Dei of Perth, the lion passant of the Ogilvies, the Atholl barry of six etc.
The next heraldic "shout-out" was to the staffs of our hospitals in the North East of Scotland. The North Eastern Hospitals Board, based as the sinister chief shows, in Aberdeen, recorded these arms with fifteen different bordures for the area's hospitals in 1949.
