William Farquharson (1760-1823) was a senior Scottish surgeon during the Scottish Enlightenment. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1806-8 and President of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh in both 1796 and 1805.
He was born in Balfour, Aberdeenshire in 1760 the son of Alexander Farquharson of Balfour (b.1716) and his wife Margaret Davie of Newmill. [1]
In 1790 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James Gregory, James Russell and Robert Kerr. [2]
In 1795 he was a Crown Witness at the trial and imprisonment of Sir Archibald Gordon Kinloch of Gilmerton for the murder of his half-brother Sir Robert Kinloch at Gilmerton House. The trial was judged by Lord Braxfield. Farquharson’s testimony focussed upon Kinloch’s mental state on two previous occasions, each tended by Dr Farquharson (the second being in Haddington jail). As one of the oddest of British judgements, although Kinloch was sentenced to life imprisonment on 15 July, Dr Farquharson offered to hold him securely in his own home rather than in prison, and the judge accepted this on 17 July. [3] His house at this time was at Worlds End Close on the Royal Mile. [4] However, Farquharson disappears from the Post Office Directories for several years; presumably to hold Kinloch in a less urban environment. This was a very considerable personal sacrifice. He rematerialises in Edinburgh following the death of Kinloch in 1800. He then lived at 16 St James Square. [5]
In 1793 Farquharson was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh and served as President in 1796 and 1805. In 1802 he delivered the Harveian oration to the Society entitled "Account of Vesalius". [6] In 1801 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club. [7]
In 1807 he is noted as donating 5 guineas towards the new Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum. [8]
His final Edinburgh address was 2 Elder Street in the First New Town. [9]
He died in Edinburgh on 25 January 1823.
He was married twice and had two sons: Joseph Canvin Farquharson (who became a banker) and Francis Farquharson of Finzean (1802-1876)
John Smith (1825–1910) was a Scottish dentist, philanthropist and pioneering educator. The founder of the Edinburgh school of dentistry, he served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1883) and president of the British Dental Association. He was the official surgeon/dentist to Queen Victoria when in Scotland.
Thomas Charles Hope was a Scottish physician, chemist and lecturer. He proved the existence of the element strontium, and gave his name to Hope's Experiment, which shows that water reaches its maximum density at 4 °C (39 °F).
Robert McQueen, Lord Braxfield was a Scottish advocate and judge.
Sir David Percival Dalbreck Wilkie,, known to friends and colleagues as DPD, was among the first of the new breed of professors of surgery appointed at a relatively young age to develop surgical research and undergraduate teaching. At the University of Edinburgh, he established a surgical research laboratory from which was to emerge a cohort of young surgical researchers destined to become the largest dynasty of surgical professors yet seen in the British Isles. He is widely regarded as the father of British academic surgery.
James Begbie was a Scottish medical doctor who served as president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh (1850–2) and as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1854–6).
Henry Dewar of Lassodie MD FRSE (1771–1823), originally Henry Frazer or Fraser, was a Scottish minister turned physician, known as a writer.
Dr George Kellie MD, FRSE (1770–1829) was a Scottish surgeon who, together with Alexander Monro secundus gave his name to the Monro-Kellie doctrine, a concept which relates intracranial pressure to the volume of intracranial contents and is a basic tenet of our understanding of the neuropathology of raised intracranial pressure. The doctrine states that since the skull is incompressible, and the volume inside the skull is fixed then any increase in volume of one of the cranial constituents must be compensated by a decrease in volume of another. Previous research about George Kellie (1720–1779) may have been hampered by a widely cited incorrect year of birth, by the spelling of his name as Kellie or Kelly and by confusion with his father, also a surgeon in Leith, with the same name and subject to similar spelling variations.
James Russell FRSE RSA (1754–1836) was a Scottish surgeon who was the first professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1805 he published one of the earliest descriptions of direct inguinal hernia. His collection of anatomical specimens was donated to the Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh and is now known as the James Russell Collection.
James Scarth Combe FRSE, FRCSEd (1796–1883) was a British surgeon. He was the first person to give an accurate description of pernicious anaemia and to recognise that atrophic gastritis was a feature of the condition. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1850 and served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1851–52.
Robert James Blair Cunynghame of Cronan, FRCSEd, FRSE JP was a prominent Scottish surgeon, physiologist and early forensic scientist in the late 19th century. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1891 to 1893. He is said to have had a calm, beautiful face and his opinion was used as a benchmark to medical thought.
Patrick Small Keir Newbigging FRSE FRSSA FRCSE (1813–1864) was a Scottish surgeon and general practitioner. He was President of the Royal Medical Society and of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts. Together with his father, Sir William Newbigging he formed one of the few father-son pairs of former Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. His observations on the origin of the heart sounds and of the apex beat of the heart made a significant contribution to the debate.
James Dunsmure FRSE FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Sir Archibald Gordon Kinloch of Gilmerton was a Scottish baronet who, in one of the most celebrated cases in late 18th century Britain, killed his elder brother, Sir Francis Kinloch, 6th baronet of Gilmerton. In the approach to the tragic events he was known by his military title of Major Alexander Gordon Kinloch. Through the greatest of ironies, due to the murder, Kinloch was thereafter entitled "Sir". It has wrongly been considered one of the first recorded instances of diminished responsibility due to mental instability. Kinloch was acquitted by reason of insanity. The case also set parameters for the use and validity of notes taken by witnesses in use as testimony.
Robert Alexander Fleming FRSE (1862-1947) was a Scottish pathologist and medical author who served as President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 1927–29.
James Methuen Graham FRSE FRCSE (1882–1962) was a Scottish surgeon. He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for the period 1945 to 1947 and Senior President of the Royal Medical Society. He made considerable advances in the fields of blood transfusion and the thyroid.
Alexander Hamilton FRSE FRCSE FRCPE (1739–1802) was a Scottish physician. He was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. He was one of the first persons to recognise that puerperal fever was infectious. He was professor of midwifery at the University of Edinburgh.
Dr Robert Peel Ritchie MD FRSE PRCPE (1835-1902) was a Scottish physician and medical historian.
Dr Andrew Fergus Hewat FRSE was a Scottish physician involved with mental health. He donated the Fergus Hewat Cup to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, an annual golf championship. This is played between the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and a combined team from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Sir William Newbigging FRSE FRCSEd FRGS was a Scottish surgeon who served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1814 to 1816. He was a keen amateur geographer.
Dr Richard Huie FRCSEd was a 19th-century Scottish surgeon who served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for the period 1840 to 1842. An ardent Christian he was also a popular hymn-writer, with at least 29 hymns to his name.