American Medical Students in Scotland 1756-1765

Most Were Aspiring Physicians from Pennsylvania and the South

Jan 20, 2009 Rosemary E. Bachelor

A Scottish physician's notebook, found before 1925, lists by name, and city or state, American students at a Scottish university between 1756 and 1765.

Author Vere Langford Oliver of Weymouth, England, discovered this notebook kept by a physician connected with an unnamed university in Scotland. It names the following College of Pharmacy students.

  • 1756--Thomas Clayton, Virginia, M.D.; James Taylor, Virginia, Joseph Edwards, New England; Thomas Bullfinch, M.D., New England.
  • 1757--James Field of Virginia.
  • 1758--George Glentworth, Philadelphia, and Thomas Robins, America.
  • 1759--Samuel Colquhoun (Calhoun), Sc., Virginia, and Edward Bridgewater, America.
  • 1760--Theodoric Bland, M.D.Virginia; William Shippen, M.D., Pennsylvania; William Smibert, M.D.,New England; James Field, Virginia; James Clitherall, Carolina.
  • 1761--James Blair, Virginia; Arthur Lee, Virginia; John Husband Osborne, America; William Bankhead, Virginia; John Morgan, Philadelphia; John Jefferys, New England.
  • 1762--Lyonel Dickson, Virginia; George Haig, Carolina; Dr. William Smibert; Corbin Griffin, Virginia.
  • 1763--Charles Drayton, S. Carolina; John Tennent, New York; George Steptoe, Virginia; James Tapscott, Philadelphia; Thomas Ruston, Philadelphia; Nicholas Eveleigh, S. Carolina; Lyonel Dickson.
  • 1764--Isaac Chanler, S. Carolina; Nicholas Eveleigh; Henry Beeder, Maryland; Edward Gantt, Maryland; Samuel Eveleigh, S. Carolina; Joseph Digges, Maryland; Hugh Williamson, Philadelphia; Edmund Dana, Boston; Noah Hart, N. Jersey.
  • 1765-- Gustavus Richard Brown, Maryland; Walter Jones, Virginia; John Ravenscroft, Virginia; Adam Kuhn, Pennsylvania.

Listed under Materia Medica for 1761 were James Blair of Virginia, Dr. William Smibert of New England, George Gilmour of America, and Arthur Lee of Virginia. Listed under “Clinical Lectures” for 1763 was James Blair.

The Scottish doctor writing the notebook used the abbreviated Latin words Nov. Angl. for New England.

Medical Education in the 1700s

Many changes in medical education were made during the 1700s. At the beginning of the century most men became apothecaries or doctors by serving a five to seven-year apprenticeship. Often these prospective physicians were errand boys or gave enemas and collected samples.

Both Oxford and Cambridge gave medical degrees, but these could be obtained by paying for them, or achieved by not coming to classes--which were mostly in philosophy, chemistry and botany--but instead presenting a thesis.

It was only as the century progressed that a doctor’s education combined both classroom studies in surgery, anatomy and physiology with clinical experience.

University of Edinburgh

The most progressive university was that in Edinburgh. It is likely the school attended by American students listed above. Here education went beyond studying Hippocrates and Galen. They received a more practical knowledge of medical procedures.

These were the days when a London physician might meet an apothecary at a coffee house each morning, receive a verbal or written list of patient complaints, tell the apothecary which chemicals to mix up as medicine, and collect fees via the apothecary. Such physicians had no contact with patients.

It was different at the University of Edinburgh, probably the finest medical school in the world at that time. Here outstanding physician William Cullen (1710-1790) both taught and demonstrated medical procedures far beyond the medical wisdom of Hippocrates and Galen.

Dr. Cullen started lecturing in English, not Latin, and the first medical texts in English came into usage. Beginning in 1755, Cullen was professor of chemistry and medicine. In 1757, he began delivering lectures on clinical medicine in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

SOURCES: “American Students in Scotland,“ Vol. 17, No. 5 (Fall, 1998), The Second Boat, Machias, ME. William Cullen and the Eighteenth Century Medical World, edited by A. Doig, J.P.S. Ferguson, I.A. Milne, and R. Passmore, Edinburgh University Press, 1993 (Distributed in the U.S. by Columbia University Press, New York).

The copyright of the article American Medical Students in Scotland 1756-1765 in Genealogy is owned by Rosemary E. Bachelor. Permission to republish American Medical Students in Scotland 1756-1765 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
University of Edinburgh Crest, Public Domain University of Edinburgh Crest
Dr. William Cullen, Public Domain Dr. William Cullen
 
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