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Glasgow School of Art
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) is just one of
the two independent schools of art in Glasgow, Scotland and started
in 1845 as the Glasgow Government School of Design, one of the
first. The school was renamed in 1853 to the Glasgow School of Art
and was located at Ingram Street but moved in 1869 to the McLellan
Galleries, and in 1897, began building a new school houses on
Renfrew Street. The structure was designed by Charles Rennie
Mackintosh and the first half finished in 1899 and the remainder in
1909 and has continued to grow, with a competition held in 2009 for
the best design of a new campus. The school has produced the
majority of the country's leading contemporary artists and
departments include; silversmithing and jewelry, painting and
printmaking, fine art photography, sculpture and environmental art,
interior design, product design, visual communication and
architecture, textiles and product design engineering. The school of
architecture was named after the GSA's most famous alumni, Charles
Rennie Mackintosh and very well thought of by the architectural
community. In the beginning of the school of arts, Mackintosh would
produce one of his finest and purest works; called Queen's Cross
Church, in Maryhill, Glasgow and is considered a hidden gem, but
also one of the artist's most mysterious works that was constructed
between 1897 and 1899. The school presently sits in a compact
campus, which means it is spread throughout 10 structures, in the
heart of the city, north of Sauchiehall Street except for the
digital design studio that is located in Pacific Quay. The
Mackintosh, or Mac is the nucleus of the campus and is still very
much one of the main functioning departments in the school and
houses the fine art painting department, first year studios and
admin staff and the interior design department. It contains the
Mackintosh gallery as well which host many various exhibitions
during the year. The gallery is the only part of the Mac that is
open to the public, but the rest of the building can be seen by
guided tour. There is one exception to the rule, and that is at the
end of the school year, when the graduating classes showcase their
final artworks and people are allowed to go all through the
building. Right across from the Mac, are the Newbery Tower, Assembly
Building and the Foulis Building. The Newbury has the refectory
cafeteria, the jewelry and silversmithing departments and the
textiles department; with the Foulis containing the center for
advanced textiles, product design engineering, visual communications
departments and the product design department. The Richmond has the
fine art photography department, and connected to this building is
the John D. Kelly building that has the printing and first year
design programs. The Mackintosh School of Architecture and the
school's library are both housed in the Bourbon Building.
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The David Livingstone Center
Blantyre is just a small village
in South Lanarkshire, some eight miles from Glasgow, Scotland and is
best known as the birthplace of David Livingstone and contains the
David Livingstone Center. It is owned and managed by the National
Trust for Scotland and was at one time a tenement house, with 24
families, including the Livingstones, living here on 20 acres of
parks and gardens. The building was converted into a museum in 1929,
and charts the life and explorations of one of the country's most
famous explorers. It houses a cornucopia of his personal items that
include his diaries, scientific, medical and navigational equipment
and educational certificates. The museum contains over 40 letters at
Blantyre with many containing medical and scientific material as
well as letters to Robert Moffat, Robert Murchison, James Loudon,
Henry Stanley and J. Risdon Bennett that includes an account of
Livingstone being mauled by a lion. The collection includes numerous
medical certificates from his time at Anderson's University in
Glasgow, with the majority of the certificates and letters being
displayed. David Livingstone was born March 19,1813 in Blantyre,
Scotland to a working class family with seven children, of which he
was the second. They all lived in the tenement building that has
become his museum and was owned by the mill company that David
started working for at the ripe age of 10. His father taught him to
read and write and besides the schooling that the company gave at
night, he learned Latin himself and developed an exceptional love of
natural history. By 19 years of age, he had been promoted and with
the increase in wages, was able to save enough money to attend
Anderson's University in 1836 to study medicine. By 1838, he had to
suspend his studies and spent a year at the London Missionary
Society in Chipping Ongar, Essex. Moving to London in 1840, he would
complete his medical studies at the British and Foreign Medical
School, Charing Cross Hospital, Aldersgate Street Dispensary and
Moorfields Hospital and by the end the year had qualified as a
Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
During the same month, he would also be ordained as a missionary by
the London Missionary Society and in December, sailed to South
Africa and then on to Kuruman where he would become the missionary's
doctor. During the years from 1841 to 1873, when he passed on, he
would explore the jungles, plains and wild lands of central and
southern Africa, hoping to spread Christianity and bring
civilization and commerce to the regions. However, he would spend
later years exploring, first the Zambesi and its tributaries and
then looking for the source of the Nile. All those years, he only
returned to his homeland twice, in 1856 and 1864. David was
one of the first medical missionaries in southern Africa, the very
first in central Africa and in many cases the first European that
met the local tribes. He easily won their trust as a healer and
medicine man, getting such a great reputation in the villages that
he finally had to limit his treatments to those that had serious
illnesses; but especially sought after for his skills in obstetrics,
ophthalmology and surgical removal of tumors. He was a thorough and
exact observer, prolific writer and his journals, letters and
published narratives gave such splendid observations on African
diseases like scurvy, malaria and tropical ulcer. He would become
the first medical practitioner to give quinine in a dose that has
grown to be considered effective so much so that unlike other
expeditions to the dark continent, his parties of explorers would
invariably suffer less of these diseases and a very low death rate.
The recipe for his remedy would become known as "Livingstone's
Rousers", and was recorded in his traveling writings and were
manufactured in tablet form by the firm of Burroughs, Wellcome and
had been available until the 1920s.
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