The Meath Hospital, one of the State's oldest, launched its 250th anniversary celebrations yesterday.
The Meath is the State's oldest voluntary hospital in continuous existence, and is also the oldest university teaching hospital in the State.
It was founded to care for the sick and the poor of Dublin's Liberties in 1753. The hospital was relocated to the new Tallaght site in 1998, along with the Adelaide and the National Children's Hospital.
The President, Mrs McAleese, unveiled a replica of the foundation stone at Tallaght Hospital yesterday.
She praised the hospital, which had grown from "pitifully grim origins" to a "modern sophisticated service".
The staff were witnesses to an awakening social consciousness which insisted on the right to decent healthcare, Mrs McAleese said.
The Meath attracted some of Ireland's most celebrated physicians and surgeons, including Robert Graves and William Stokes. They became famous after they introduced bedside teaching to the English-speaking world.
Graves described many diseases for the first time, including Grave's disease of the thyroid. Stokes is seen one of the founders of modern cardiology, and two conditions, Stokes-Adams attacks and Cheyne-Stokes breathing, were named after him.
In 1844, the Meath Hospital was the site of the first hypodermic injection, and in 1900 it employed one of the first radiologists in the State.
It also had many literary associations.
The writer Jonathan Swift kept a garden and a paddock for his horse on the site of the old hospital.
Brendan Behan and James Clarence Mangan spent some of their last days in the hospital, while Oliver St John Gogarty worked there.
