Cullen , William , 1710-1790 , physician

Born, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, 1710; educated, Glasgow University, and became pupil of a physician; surgeon to a merchant ship, 1729; apothecary's assistant, London; practiced at Auchinlee, near Hamilton, 1731-1732; student, Edinburgh Medical School, 1734-1736; practiced as a surgeon in Hamilton, 1736-1744; chief magistrate of Hamilton, 1739-1740; graduated MD, Glasgow, 1740; practiced in Glasgow, 1744-; founded a medical school, lecturing on medicine and several other subjects; made some discoveries on the evolution of heat in chemical combinations and the cooling of solutions; Professor of Medicine, Glasgow University, 1751; joint Professor of Chemistry, Edinburgh University; began to give clinical lectures in the infirmary, 1757; delivered a course of lectures on materia medica, continuing his chemistry course, 1760-1761; Professor of the 'Institutes' or theory of physic, Edinburgh University, 1766-1773; lectured in alternate years on the theory and the practice of medicine with John Gregory; Professor of the Practice of Physic, Edinburgh University, 1773-1789; President, Edinburgh College of Physicians, 1773-1775; helped prepare the new edition of the 'Edinburgh Pharmacopeia', 1774; foreign associate of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris, 1776; Fellow, Royal Society of London, 1777; died, 1790.

Publications include: Lectures on the Materia Medica, etc (T Lowndes, London, 1773); A Letter to Lord Cathcart ... concerning the recovery of persons drowned and seemingly dead (J Murray, London, 1776); Of the Cold produced by evaporating Fluids, and of some other means of producing cold (1777); Institutions of Medicine. Part I. Physiology. For the use of students in the University of Edinburgh Second edition (W Creech, Edinburgh, 1677 [1777]); First Lines of the Practice of Physic, for the use of students in the University of Edinburgh Second edition 4 volumes (William Creech, Edinburgh, 1778-1784); The Substance of Nine Lectures on Vegetation and Agriculture, delivered to a private audience in the year 1768 (1796); Clinical Lectures delivered in the years 1765 and 1766 (Lee & Hurst, London, 1797); Nosology: or, a Systematic arrangement of diseases, by classes, orders, genera, and species; with the distinguishing characters of each, and outlines of the systems of Sauvages, Linnæus, Vogel, Sagar, and Macbride. Translated from the Latin of W Cullen (William Creech, Edinburgh, 1800); The Works of William Cullen ... Containing his Physiology, Nosology and First Lines of the Practice of Physic: with numerous extracts from his manuscript papers, and from his Treatise of the Materia Medica Edited by John Thomson 2 volumes (William Blackwood, Edinburgh; T & G Underwood, London, 1827).