Baillie , Matthew , 1761-1823 , physician and anatomist

Matthew Baillie was born in Shotts manse, Lanarkshire, in 1761. He was the son of James Baillie (c 1722-1778) and his wife, Dorothea (c 1721-1806). They also had two daughters, the younger was Joanna Baillie the poet. Dorothea Baillie's father was John Hunter of Long Calderwood, near East Kilbride, Lanarkshire; and her brothers were the anatomists William Hunter and John Hunter. Matthew Baillie was educated at the English school in Hamilton, 1766-1768; the Latin school in Hamilton, 1768-1774; and at the University of Glasgow, 1774-1779. He matriculated at Oxford in 1779. He went to live with his uncle, William Hunter, in London in 1780. He still attended Oxford, and graduated BA in 1783, and MA in 1786. He attended dissections and lectures at William Hunter's anatomy school and museum in Great Windmill Street. He also went to courses in chemistry, medicine, surgery, and obstetrics given by his uncle John Hunter; George Fordyce; Thomas Denman; and William Osborne. When William Hunter died in 1783 he left Baillie in control of the anatomy school, the freehold of the premises, thirty years' use of the museum, and about £5000. The small Hunter family estate of Long Calderwood also passed to Baillie, but he renounced it in favour of John Hunter. Baillie soon became an anatomy lecturer at Great Windmill Street, working in increasingly uneasy partnership with William Hunter's former partner William Cruikshank, until 1799. He also completed his broader medical training as a pupil at St George's Hospital, where he was appointed physician in 1787. In mid-1788 he made a four-month tour of France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, visiting many hospitals and anatomy schools, recording critical observations on conditions and techniques. He graduated BM at Oxford in 1786; DM in 1789; and was elected FRCP (London) in 1790. William Hunter's posthumous An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus and its Contents (1794) was edited for publication by Baillie. Two papers in Philosophical Transactions in 1788 and 1789 were followed by his election FRS in 1790 (FRSE in 1799); many medical societies gave him the professional accolade of honorary membership. He was Croonian lecturer of the Royal Society (1791), and of the Royal College of Physicians of London (1796-1798), for whom he was also Goulstonian lecturer (1794); he gave the Harveian oration in 1798. In 1805 he was a founder member (and second president, 1808-1810) of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, forerunner of the Royal Society of Medicine. Also in 1810 he was appointed physician-extraordinary to George III, visiting the deranged king several hundred times during the regency, and was present at his death in 1820. He was physician-in-ordinary to Princess Charlotte, and had overall responsibility for the management of her confinement in 1817. His brother-in-law, Sir Richard Croft, 6th baronet (1762-1818), was principal accoucheur. Tragically, the child was still-born, and Princess Charlotte died a few hours later. Croft shot himself a few months afterwards probably suffering from depression. Baillie also attended Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Edward Gibbon, and he examined Samuel Johnson's lungs post mortem. Baillie died in 1823.