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Robert Whytt was born in Edinburgh in 1714. He studied in St Andrews, where he was awarded Master of Arts in 1730, and also in Edinburgh, Paris and Leiden. He was awarded Doctor of Medicine at the University of Rheims in 1736. He began to practice as a doctor in 1738. He was appointed Professor of Medicine, at the University of Edinburgh in 1747, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1752. Whytt's important work concerned unconscious reflexes, tubercular meningitis, and the treatment of urinary bladder stones. His experiments indirectly led to the discovery of carbon dioxide by Joseph Black in 1754. His studies of reflexology and tubercular meningitis had a greater impact on the science of medicine. Whytt was the first to ascribe a reflex - Whytt's reflex, a dilation of the pupil brought on by pressure on the optic thalamus - to a specific part of the body. He also demonstrated that the spinal cord, rather than the brain, could be the source of involuntary action. His description of 'dropsy of the brain' (tubercular meningitis) was the first methodical and accurate definition of the disease, and it would have been impossible to define to a more accurate extent with the instruments available in at that time. He was physician to King George III in Scotland from 1761. He was elected President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1763. He died in 1766.