Robert Macnish (15 February 1802 – 16 January 1837) was a Scottish surgeon physician, philosopher and writer.
Robert Macnish (15 February 1802 – 16 January 1837) was a Scottish surgeon physician, philosopher and writer.
Robert Macnish was born at Henderson’s Court, Jamaica Street, Glasgow. His father and grandfather were doctors and after private education in Glasgow and at the long-established Old Grammar School of Hamilton (renamed the Hamilton Academy in 1848), Robert Macnish undertook his medical studies at the University of Glasgow obtaining a C.M. degree in 1820 and an M.D. in 1825. In 1827 he became a Member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (now known as the Royal College). [1] [2] [3]
Macnish’s first professional appointment was as an assistant to a doctor (Henderson) in Caithness, north Scotland. It was during his eighteen months there that he began his philosophical studies and composed his first literary works, including The Tale of Eivor, a Scandinavian Legend, and the Harp of Salem, published in the Inverness Journal. Other works, in prose and verse, were published in the Literary Melange and the Emmet periodicals and in 1822 he submitted to the Edinburgh Magazine the short stories Macvurich the Murderer and The Dream Confirmed, both based on real incidents he learned of during his time in Caithness.
Returning to Glasgow, Macnish then journeyed to Paris where for a year he continued his medical and literary studies and tried to regain his health, damaged during his time in the north of Scotland. From Paris he returned to Glasgow as an assistant to his doctor father and to complete his medical studies, gaining his M.D. from Glasgow University in 1825. In that same year he became a Member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, giving as his inaugural thesis an essay on The Anatomy of Drunkenness, which he later published in 1827. [4] This was to be expanded until a fifth edition, published in 1834. [1] [2]
It was from 1825 that Robert Macnish’s association with Blackwood's Magazine began with the publication, as a leading article, of his story The Metempsychosis, followed by publication of his Man with the Nose, and the Barber of Gottingen. 1826 brought publication of his Adventures of Colonel O’Shaughnessy and Who can it be?, and for Macnish the epithet, 'Modern Pythagorean'. His other works included Execution at Paris, Night near Monte Video, A Vision of Robert Bruce, The Philosophy of Sleep, and his Book of Aphorisms, published in 1833. His Introduction to Phrenology followed in 1835.
Macnish’s works were to be translated into French and German, and re-published in the United States. In 1835 he was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. by Hamilton College, United States.
Contracting influenza that developed into typhus fever, Robert Macnish died at Glasgow and was interred in the cemetery of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Chapel, Glasgow. His portrait by Daniel Maclise, and published by James Fraser as a lithograph in 1835, is held in the National Gallery, London. [2] [5]
Among the published works by Robert Macnish (or as co-author,) published in his lifetime or re-published after his death in 1837 were: [6] [7] [8] [9]
The Dean Cemetery is a historically important Victorian cemetery north of the Dean Village, west of Edinburgh city centre, in Scotland. It lies between Queensferry Road and the Water of Leith, bounded on its east side by Dean Path and on its west by the Dean Gallery. A 20th-century extension lies detached from the main cemetery to the north of Ravelston Terrace. The main cemetery is accessible through the main gate on its east side, through a "grace and favour" access door from the grounds of Dean Gallery and from Ravelston Terrace. The modern extension is only accessible at the junction of Dean Path and Queensferry Road.
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Mark Hopkins was an American educator and Congregationalist theologian, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. An epigram — widely attributed to President James A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins — defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other".
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Henry Clutterbuck M.D. (1767–1856) was an English medical writer.
Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster was an English astronomer, physician, naturalist and philosopher. An early animal rights activist, he promoted vegetarianism and founded the Animals' Friend Society with Lewis Gompertz. He published pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects, including morality, Pythagorean philosophy, bird migration, Sati, and "phrenology", a term that he coined in 1815.
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded in 1820 by George Combe, an Edinburgh lawyer, with his physician brother Andrew Combe. The Edinburgh Society was the first and foremost phrenology grouping in Great Britain; more than forty phrenological societies followed in other parts of the British Isles. The Society's influence was greatest over the next two decades but declined in the 1840s; the final meeting was recorded in 1870.
Richard Poole (1783–1871) was a Scottish physician, psychiatrist, and phrenologist.
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Events from the year 1837 in Scotland.
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