william cullen dot net

In the thirty-eighth volume of The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, there is a very illuminating, but anonymous, review of the first volume of John Thomson’s Life of William Cullen. In the literature on Cullen, it is sometimes mentioned but rarely discussed. Instead, Sir William Hamilton’s review of the same book, published anonymously in The Edinburgh Review in July 1832¹ gets the lion share of attention.

But I want to focus attention on the anonymous review. To begin: who wrote it? The only person that mentions this review, if memory serves, is Mike Barfoot. He refers to it in a footnote (footnote 15) in his introduction (1997) to a republished edition of both volumes of Thomson’s biography. He adds a bit more detail in his chapter “Philosophy and Method in Cullen’s Medical Teaching” (1993) in endnote 68, where he writes: “This aspect of Cullen’s thought [Cullen's skeptical approach] was emphasised in an unsigned editorial (Edin. Med. Surg. J. 1832; 38: 384-420), probably by D. Craigie and more fully by him when he completed Thomsons Life (ref. 3 vol. 2: 610)…” (131).² 

Setting aside the issue of interpretation, here we have a fairly confident suggestion about who wrote it: David Craigie (1793-1866).³ Craigie graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1816 and became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1832. Indeed, he was its President from 1861-3. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society. He also acted as physician to the Royal Infirmary for a number of years. He published a number of books and papers, dozens of publications in total. For our purposes, it is significant that Craigie became the owner of, and edited himself for many years, The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. It is not clear, from the DNB, which years this encompassed, but we know that Craigie was already doing a lot of work for the EMSJ in 1832, for in the very same issue (No. 113) where the review appears, there are two papers by Craigie (Articles VIII & XII). If I’m not mistaken, no other author has more than one article to his name. This suggests, at least circumstantially, that Craigie was already editing the journal by 1832.

Craigie, of course, already wrote a large chunk of the second half of Volume II of the Life of Cullen. To be precise, he was responsible for page 401 onwards.⁴.

I assume that Barfoot is basing his conjecture on another piece of circumstantial evidence, and that is the similarity of views found in the anonymous review and in Craigie’s contribution to the Life of Cullen. Barfoot emphasises the portrait of Cullen as a skeptical inquirer that one finds in both pieces. I would add to this the emphasis made in both pieces on the originality of Cullen’s contribution to Materia Medica.

All of this points to Craigie’s authorship of the anonymous review. But I have another piece of evidence that I think, in concert with the others, established the identification, even if it still falls short of a declaration by Craigie that he wrote the 1832 review (that, by the way, may still turn up after a thorough examination of the letters between Allen Thomson and David Craigie, held at Glasgow University Library, Special Collections). Consider the statements about Cullen made on pages 675-676 in Volume II of the Life of Cullen, contained in the paragraph that starts, “The leading characters of the intellect of William Cullen were…” (675). A very similar paragraph—essentially verbatim—occurs in the anonymous review, beginning on page 406. Thus, either Craigie plagiarised parts of the anonymous review for his contribution to the Life of Cullen—which would be singularly strange, given how much space is devoted in that volume (including in the parts that Craigie wrote) to showing how John Brown shamefully plagiarised from Cullen’s lectures—or he was just re-using parts of the earlier review, which he himself wrote.

I would confidently conclude the latter: David Craigie was the author of the anonymous (now, no longer!) 1832 review of volume I of Thomson’s Life of Cullen.

Of course, there is still much to say about the content and arguments of the review itself, which I think provides a novel interpretation of Cullen’s importance in the history of medicine, and should be read, in conjunction with Craigie’s contribution to the second volume of the Life. There is a Craigiean interpretation of Cullen, which overlaps with—but is not identical to—the Thomsonian interpretation, which has been lost sight of, I think, for at least two reasons: (i) the 1832 review, which states Craigie’s interpretation more forcefully and concisely than in his later discussion, was written anonymously and not generally linked to Craigie and (ii) Craigie’s interpretation, as provided in Volume II of the Life, was not stated as forcefully as his earlier discussion because it was under the constraints of continuing the work that the Thomsons had already written (and Allen Thomson, in his role as editor, made sure that Craigie did not stray too far from the Thomsonian view).

Let’s recap what we know from my last post. Two South Sea Company ships, both captained by someone named Cleland, set sail from Portsmouth (Spithead), England on November 25, 1730 headed to Porto-Bello.

The Prince William

One ship, the Prince William, reached St. Christopher’s on January 8th, 1731, stayed for 10 days, then set sail (January 18th or thereabouts) for Carthagena, but stayed less than a day. She finally arrived at Porto-Bello on January 31st. She stayed for 5 months and set sail again on July 1st. The Prince William finally returned to England (Dartmouth) on September 9, 1731, loaded with cargo. She may have continued to another port in England at that point, but for our purposes, her journey was complete. Indeed, some of the cargo was off-loaded at Darmouth, along with “some other Gentlemen, who immediately took Post for London.”

The itinerary was as follows:

November 25, 1730 – Set sail from Portsmouth (Spithead)
January 8th, 1731 – Arrived at St. Christopher’s
January 18th (or thereabouts) – Set sail for Carthagena (but stayed less than 24 hours); continued to Porto-Bello
January 31st – Arrived at Porto-Bello

Porto-Bello: January 31st – July 1st

July 1st – Left Porto-Bello
September 9th, 1731 – Arrived at Dartmouth

The St. Philip Snow

We know less about the St. Philip Snow. Here is its itinerary, thus far:

November 25, 1730 – Set sail from Portsmouth (Spithead)
Early 1731: Arrived in Jamaica
Feb 27th, 1731: Set sail for Porto Bello (with slaves aboard)

We still don’t know which ship Cullen was attached to, or anything else about the St. Philip Snow. So, back to the newspapers we go.

The London Evening Post for August 23-25, 1733 tells us that

Yesterday the South Sea company receiv’d Advice of the safe Arrival of the St. Philip Snow, at Portsmouth, in six Weeks from St. Jago de Cuba, Capt. Stephens, late Capt. Cleland.

This is key: it appears that Capt. Cleland of the St. Philip Snow died in 1733, while away from Great Britain. I could not find any reference in the London newspapers—which were usually quite detailed on the coming and goings of ships—of the St. Philip Snow returning before the date mentioned above. It’s possible it did and just went unnoticed. But even if that were the case, the death of Capt. Cleland in 1733 puts it beyond doubt that this is not the Capt. Cleland we are looking for. This is because Cullen went to stay, for two years, with Capt. Cleland in the parish of Shotts after returning from his voyage. Thomson (Life, v1, 6-7) tells us:

After returning from the West Indies, Dr Cullen remained for some time in London, and during his stay there attended the shop of Mr Murray, apothecary in Henrietta Street…Dr Cullen returned to Scotland in the end of the year 1731, or in the beginning of 1732…In these circumstances, he was invited by his friend Captain Cleland to reside with him at his family estate of Auchinlee, in the parish of Shotts, and to take [p.7] charge of the health of his son, who was affected with a lingering disorder. This situation was peculiarly convenient for Dr Cullen in commencing the practice of his profession. It was near to Hamilton, the place of his birth, and in the vicinity of the residences of many of the most considerable families in the county of Lanark. It was in the neighbourhood also of his patrimonial property, the lands of Saughs, and of another small farm which belonged to his family in the parish of Shotts. Whilst residing there, he seems to have combined with his medical practice the most unremitting application to his studies. Captain Cleland was often heard to say, that nothing could exceed his assiduity at this period; for when not engaged in visiting patients, or in preparing medicines for them, his time was wholly occupied with his books.

After having practiced medicine for nearly two years in the situation described, Dr Cullen, on succeeding to a small legacy by the death of a relation, resolved to devote his attention exclusively to his studies for a certain period, preparatively to fixing himself as a medical practitioner in the town of Hamilton.

So, the Capt. Cleland of the ship Cullen worked on was still alive in 1733, if Thomson’s dates are roughly accurate. Cullen appears to have stayed with Cleland at his family estate of Auchinlee for two years, perhaps from early 1732 to 1734, or thereabouts.

We can, therefore, with some confidence eliminate the St. Philip Snow as the ship on which Cullen practiced as a surgeon. But can we conclude that Cullen was a surgeon on Capt. Cleland’s ship, the Prince William?

I’m inclined to think so, but I would be more confident if we could obtain a crucial piece of information: is there evidence that confirms that the Capt. Cleland of the Prince William is also the Capt. Cleland of Auchinlee, who resided there in the early 1730s? If we could connect those pieces of information, we would be in a strong position to conclude that the Prince William was Cullen’s ship.

I will attempt to do this in Part 3.

I have seen, in the secondary literature about Cullen, some confusion about the timing of some major milestones in his life: when he was a student at Glasgow University, when he moved permanently to Edinburgh, when he taught specific courses, etc. Part of the reason for this is that Thomson never included a chronology with his biography, and so there is no quick way to find out what Thomson – still the authority on these matters – says about the dates of a particular event. There is a chronology in the edited volume William Cullen and the Eighteenth Century Medical World (1993) but I don’t know how widely available the book itself is.

Yet there is an additional problem: Thomson himself does not – presumably could not – always provide a date, especially with respect to Cullen’s early life. And even the dates he provides are not always linked to documentary material, so it’s difficult to know where he gets his evidence, or how strong it is. One of the things I’d like to do is to link Thomson’s dates to documentary/archival material and to fill in some gaps.

In that vein, I’ve been curious about Cullen’s time as a ship surgeon. Here’s what Thomson writes:

“On finishing his medical studies at Glasgow, Dr Cullen went to London, towards the end of the year 1729, with the view of obtaining a situation in which he might enjoy opportunities of acquiring a practical knowledge of his profession. Soon after arriving there, he had the good fortune to be appointed surgeon to a merchant ship, the Captain of which, Mr Cleland of Auchinlee, was a relation of his own. His appointment to this situation is mentioned in the following passage of a letter from his eldest brother to his mother, dated Edinburgh, 9th December 1729.—‘Mr Hamilton of Dalserf got a letter last day from London from his brother Alexander, wherein he tells him that he was present with Captain Cleland when Commissioner Cleland solicited him very strongly in favour of one Mr Cullen a son of Saughs, and used [p. 5] very strong arguments with him to take care of him; and, among the rest, that he was a cousin of the Captain’s. So the Captain promised to provide for him; but William desires that Dalserf would write to the Captain and thank him for it, for he said it was much owing to his letter.—I assure you every body thinks my brother very lucky; for Mr Alexander writes also, that the Captain has had a levee, like a General’s, every day, and there have been many solicitations for that very appointment. However, for any thing I can find, William has been pretty active in the affair, and I believe has half teazed them into it.’—It appears also, from a letter written many years after by a younger brother of Dr Cullen’s, that, on obtaining this appointment, he underwent a medical examination, and acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of his examiners, that they were pleased to pay him some very flattering compliments, and to encourage him strongly to persevere in that diligence which it was evident to them he had employed in the study of his profession.

The vessel to which Dr Cullen was appointed surgeon, was engaged in trading to the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, and remained during her voyage for six months at Porto-Bello, a circumstance incidentally mentioned by himself in one of his lectures on the Practice of Physic…[p. 6] After returning from the West Indies, Dr Cullen remained for some time in London, and during his stay there attended the shop of Mr Murray, apothecary in Henrietta Street” (Thomson, Life v1, 4-6).

How might we find more information about Cullen’s experience? What, for example, was the name of the ship he was attached to? If we could figure that out, we might be able to fill in some dates and details of his time as a ship surgeon. Thomson gives us just enough information, I think, to determine this, even if he did not pursue it.

We are, then, looking for a merchant ship, captained by Mr Cleland of Auchinlee (related to Commissioner Cleland). The ship seems to have been of some importance, if the “Captain has had a levee, like a General’s, every day” for parceling out positions on the ship. My guess is that it would have been a large rather than a small ship, but that could be wrong. As far as dates, it’s likely that it would not have left London before 1730. It was “engaged in trading to the Spanish settlements in the West Indies” and spent “six months at Porto-Bello”.

A search of the London newspapers for “Captain Cleland” between 1729 and 1731 turns up some interesting results. Here is an item from the London Evening Post, October 1-3, 1730:

We hear that at a Court of Directors of the South Sea Company held yesterday, it was resolved, that their Ship Prince William, Capt. Cleland, should (as soon as the Wind permits) proceed for New Spain, in order, if possible, to reach the Fair of Porto Bello; and that upon her Arrival near Carthagena, the Captain do send ashore, or otherwise get Information concerning the Galleons, which if he finds in that Post, then he is to go in with the Ship; but in case they are gone fro thence, he is to proceed with her to Porto Bello; and if when he arrives there, he finds the Fair is ended, he is then to proceed from Jamaica, and there wait their further Orders.

This sounds promising indeed. A ship headed to Porto Bello, with a Captain Cleland, in late 1730.

Let’s see what further news items tell us.

The Daily Journal for Wednesday, October 21, 1730, in a section titled Home Ports, has this item:

Deal, Oct. 28. Remain the Garland and Lively Men of War, the last put back Yesterday also the Prince William, Cleland, and the St. Philip Snow, Cleland, both for Porto Bello;

Hmm – now we have two ships headed to Porto Bello, both with a Captain named Cleland! And at the same time – how likely is that?! It looks like we have to learn more about two vessels, (i) the Prince William and (ii) the St. Philip Snow.¹ And they both were captained by someone named Cleland. Let’s return to the newspapers to find out more, if we can.

The Daily Journal for November 28, 2730 has another Home Ports update:

Portsmouth, Nov. 26. Yesterday Morning sailed from Spithead² the South-Sea Company’s Ship Prince William, Capt. Cleland, and Snow St. Philip, Capt. Cleland, both for Porto-Bello;³

Well, at least we now know when the ships set sail from Great Britain—November 25, 1730—even if we don’t know which of the two ships Cullen was on. Let’s continue to follow the papers for more. The London Evening Post for March 16-18, 1731 provides us with an update about one of the ships:

The South-Sea Company’s Ship, Prince William, Capt. Cleland, which sailed from Spithead the 25th of November, arrived at St. Christopher’s⁴ the 8th of January, and after ten Day’s Refreshment there, sailed for Carthagena ⁵; where, no doubt, she would find the Galleons, which, in Letters dated Nov. 5. it is written, were at soonest not to sail before the End of January for Porto Bello, where it was believed the Fair would be held in April.

There is no update, however, of the St. Philip Snow. But the Daily Journal, May 25, 1731, provides us with an unexpected bit of detail – an ‘Extract of a Letter from on board the South-Sea Company’s Ship Prince William, Capt. Cleland, dated at Porto Bello the 7th of March’:

We arrived here from London the 31st of January, having touched at Carthagena, but finding the Galleons were sailed for this Place, we did not stay there 24 Hours. It is expected, that the Fair will begin in about a Month, (till when we shall not be permitted to sell any Goods) and we are in Hopes of being in England about October. The People on board us in general are well; we have bury’d but three Persons since we left Portsmouth.

Further down the page of the very same issue, we get an update about the St. Philip:

His Majesty’s Snow (or Sloop) the Tryal, is arrived at Weymouth, She brings Letters from Jamaica, dated the 2d of April, but no material News. The Five Sisters, Holms from London, was arrived there. The South-Sea Company’s Snow, S. Philip, Capt. Cleland, sailed from thence the 27th of Feb. with Negroes for Porto Bello;

So, while both the Prince William and the St. Philip set sail from Spithead (or Portsmouth) on the same day, they had different itineraries. The Prince William stopped at St. Christopher’s, Carthagena and finally Porto Bello. Meanwhile, the St. Philip stopped at Jamaica and, on Feb 27th, set sail for Porto Bello. It appears to have been part of the South Sea Company’s slave trade.

The Daily Journal on September 14, 1731 brings more news:

On Sunday Evening came Advice of the South Sea Company’s Ship Prince William, Capt. Cleland, having arrived off Dartmouth the 9th Instant.

She came from Porto Bello the 1st of July, and off of that Place was received by the Lyon Man of War, Capt. Perry Maine, which convoy’d her to Dona Maria Bay, on the West End of Hispaniola, where they found the Seaford Man of War, Capt. Laws, which waited there for her, by Order of Rear Admiral Stewart, to convoy her to England. The Lyon returned from thence for Jamaica, and the Seaford and Prince William proceeded homeward, but in the Latitude of Bermuda (32 Degrees and 30 Min.) a violent Storm arose, in which they parted: The Seaford had been leakey before the Storm came on, but as in the Storm, at about a League and a half Distance, she fired a Gun, it is believed she bore away for the first Land she could make, in order to stop her Leaks.

The Prince William has on board, for Account of the Company, 1,500,000 Pieces of Eight, and in Jesuits Bark, Cochineal, Loggood, and Drugs, near the Value of 500,000 Pieces of Eight more.

The Account of the Galleons sailing from Porto Bello the 2d of June, for Carthagena, is confirmed, and that they were to stay there but 14 Days.

There is a lot of wonderful detail here. The Country Journal or The Craftsman on Saturday, September 18, 1731 confirms most of it:

They write from Dartmouth, Sept. 10. That the Prince William, Capt. Cleland, belonging to the Hon. the South Sea Company, arrived the Day before off that harbour in 70 Days from Porto Bello, and landed the Supercargoes and some other Gentlemen, who immediately took Post for London.

She came from Porto Bello the 1st of July, and off of that Place was received by the Lyon Man of War, Capt. Perry Maine, which convoy’d her to Donna Maria Bay, on the West End of Hispaniola, where they found the Seaford Man of War, Capt. Laws, which waited there for her, by Order of Read Admiral Stewart, to convoy her to England. The Lyon return’d from thence for Jamaica , and the Seaford and Prince William proceeded Homeward; but the Latitudes of Bermuda (32 Degrees and 30 Minutes) a violent Storm arose, in which they parted. The Seaford had been leaky before the Storm came on; but as in the Storm, at about a League and a half Distance, she fired a Gun, it is believed she bore away for the first Land she could make, in Order to stop her Leaks.

The Prince William has on board, for Account of the Company, 1,500,000 Pieces of Eight, and in Jesuits Bark, cochineal, Logwood and Drugs, near the Value of 500,000 Pieces of Eight more.

It appears that the Prince William arrived, then, back in England (at least at Dartmouth) on September 9, 1731, carrying quite a lot of Cargo. She left Porto Bello the 1st of July, having arrived there on January 31st (remaining at Porto Bello for 5 months).

We still can’t be sure, however, that this was the ship Cullen was on. What about the St. Philip Snow with the other Capt. Cleland?

To be continued in my next post…

—

In Volume 1 of his The Works of William Cullen, John Thomson (et al.) prints some very interesting manuscript source material related to Cullen’s views on the history of medicine, the proper plan for studying it, and some general thoughts on the purpose and use of nosology (see pp. 364-464).

In the Preface to this volume, Thomson says this about the material in this section:

The Lectures introductory to the Course on the Practice of Physic, now published for the first time, have been printed from copies of them corrected in Dr. Cullen’s hand-writing. To these Lectures I have restored a portion of the History of Medicine, which Dr. Cullen had transferred to his preface to the First Lines (v-vi).

The latter statement is slightly puzzling at first, but all Thomson is indicating here is that he reprints a large chunk (where Cullen discusses the history of medicine) of Cullen’s preface to the 1784 edition of his First Lines in this section. But he does not leave this intact. Instead he splits it up into two parts: p. xi-xxxiv of the preface is printed on pp. 403-415 in the Works, while p. xxxiv to xlvi is printed on pp. 427-432. Incidentally the rest of the preface is also printed  in the Works, again split up, as the Preface to Cullen’s First Lines which begins on p. 467. More precisely, p. i-vi of the original preface is printed on pp. 467-469; at the end of the 2nd paragraph on p. 469, the preface continues but it now contains p. xlvi of the original preface. Thomson does not indicate this switch. And, in fact, Thomson does not indicate where he prints the original Preface in the ‘Lectures Introductory’ section, either. He is, instead, trying to create a seamless reading experience that makes sense of the source material.

What about the rest of the ‘Lectures Introductory’ section? Where does that come from? In a footnote (n. 48) in his chapter on ‘Philosophy and method in Cullen’s medical teaching’, Mike Barfoot says about this material: “It is not known precisely which copies Thomson drew upon. However, the final version in the Works, though based on lectures once spoken was probably written out by an amanuensis…” (130).

I am preparing — very slowly, as time is limited — a marked-up edition (an annotated PDF) of the Works (and the Life), in which I attempt to identify all of Thomson’s source material, i.e. everything he includes in ‘inverted commas’ as he calls them (quotation marks, in my idiolect).

And I have spent some time doing this for the ‘Lectures Introductory’ section already because it is the basis for a chapter I have been working on about Cullen’s understanding of the role of theory in medicine. And I have now, just about, identified all the source material.

So now we can identify precisely the manuscript material Thomson drew upon to create this section of the Works. It is something of a hodge-podge of a number of different sources stuck together, done in a way that Thomson thought made sense. I think the example I highlighted above gives some indication of this, with the caveat that, at least in that case, Thomson is working with printed source material. Everything becomes more complicated when handwritten source material is at issue.

A great deal of it, as Barfoot suspected, is written in the hand of a number of Cullen’s amanuenses over the years, but with Cullen’s handwritten corrections, as Thomson tells us (see above). In this sense, the material is more worked through and complete than Cullen’s lecture notes, if not quite on par with his published works. It provides a very reliable picture of what Cullen thought about these topics. And, in fact, a surprising amount of the material is even in Cullen’s hand, written in full.

It is very helpful to know the actual source material for this long, important section of the Works because it is clear that what Thomson has done here — and, indeed, in the Works as a whole, though perhaps this section is the most complex — is anything but a straightforward editing job and must be used with a good deal of caution.

In 1797 a volume entitled Clinical Lectures, Delivered in the Years 1765 and 1766, by William Cullen, M.D. Taken in Short-hand by a Gentleman who attended was published in London by Lee and Hurst. In Volume II of the Life of Cullen, Allen Thomson (the editor), in his list of the ‘Published Writings of Dr Cullen’ (pp. 687-690) has this to say about it (or he may have just been copying what John or William Thomson had written elsewhere):

Besides the works here enumerated, there were published at London, in the year 1797, seven years after the death of Dr Cullen, Clinical Lectures by Dr Cullen in 1765 and 1766. This volume, however, is one of questionable authenticity; and though it professes to give Clinical Lectures by Dr Cullen, it cannot justly be regarded as a production of his. It was merely a speculation of the bookseller; and, indeed, any book bearing the name of Cullen, for some years before his death, and after that event, would have been readily bought (690).

John Thomson claimed that the notes for Cullen’s clinical lectures for these years survive (see p. 107, Vol I, for his list), so it should be possible to compare the contents of the published volume to Cullen’s own lecture notes to verify just how accurate—or speculative—this publication actually is (I don’t have the catalogue numbers at hand for these notes, though they are almost certainly held at the RCPE).

Nonetheless, I’m confident the 1797 publication was not a fabrication. I think I have discovered the ‘author’ of the manuscript upon which this volume is based  - i.e. the person who transcribed the notes, and indeed, his transcription of those very notes. So I think the publication is authentic and not a mere ‘speculation of the bookseller’, although it may have been initiated by the bookseller. In any case, it is likely what it says it is. However, the accuracy of the notes is still an open question.

Addendum: I have discovered that John Thomson (et al.) quotes directly from the published Clinical Lectures discussed above, so its dismissal by Allen Thomson/David Craigie was not shared by John Thomson himself. If you compare the MS quotation from Thomson’s Life of Cullen, Vol 1, p. 342-343, you will see it is identical to the bottom half of p. 9 from the Clinical Lectures, published in 1797. Thomson also quotes directly and explicitly from the Clinical Lectures on p. 268 of Vol. 1, as well, without condemning them. And finally, the section on Headache found in his Works, Vol 2, pp. 537-559, comes directly from the published Clinical Lectures (1797).

So, this source warrants more attention than it has traditionally been given – at least, John Thomson thought so.

I’ve just completed a major update to the E-Cullen page. It’s not yet comprehensive, but I’ve linked to quite a number of Cullen’s works and various editions of each. You can now read all of Thomson’s works on Cullen (the biography and edited collection of Cullen’s works), and at least one edition of each of Cullen’s published works.

Work continues…

Prof. Christopher Lawrence, now Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at UCL’s Centre for the History of Medicine, wrote his 1984 PhD thesis on medicine and culture in 18th-century Edinburgh. No one in the past 30 years has written with more knowledge about the Edinburgh Medical School and its professors. His unpublished thesis, Medicine as Culture: Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment (1984), provides a detailed overview of Edinburgh establishment medicine in the latter half of the 18th century—its institutions, social context, and intellectual content. Four of the nine chapters are devoted to a handful of the most influential professors at the School during the eighteenth-century: Robert Whytt, Alexander Monro secundus, John Gregory, and William Cullen.

Lawrence’s chapter on Cullen is over 100 pages in length and surely must count as the most in-depth discussion of Cullen’s medical views by a single author since John Thomson’s work in the 19th century.

What adds to the importance of this thesis is the fact that it is not the product of a newly trained scholar. I have no idea how long Lawrence worked on his PhD, but I do know that he was publishing scholarly journal articles and contributing to edited collections, as early as the mid-1970s. Thus his thesis should be seen, not as a new historian’s entrance into the profession, but as a fairly seasoned scholar’s distillation of many year’s work on this topic. The breadth and variety of primary sources that Lawrence draws upon throughout the thesis is testament enough to his experience and maturity by 1984.

For all these reasons, I thought it worthwhile to make his PhD thesis more widely available, especially to folks interested in Cullen. We are in the midst of a digital revolution in the humanities, so it is no surprise that copies of PhD theses can be found online too. Indeed, I first obtained a PDF copy of Lawrence’s thesis from the British Library’s excellent ETHoS service (registered users can find Lawrence’s thesis here - but do not download it, for the reasons I am about to explain).

After working with the PDF for a couple of days, however, I noticed two drawbacks to using it. First, at over 500 pages, it was hard to navigate without a detailed, digital table of contents (including references to the endnotes for each chapter). So I created one. Second, a not-insignificant number of pages contained no page numbers, and this was especially true of the chapter on Cullen. So I added them. The result is a PDF that is much easier to work with and to cite.

Prof. Lawrence kindly gave me permission to post a link to a PDF copy (my enhanced version) of his thesis on this website, and I have done so below. I will also include a permanent link in the sidebar, so that the thesis is accessible from any page of the site, instead of just this post.

I hope this makes Lawrence’s work more accessible.

—

Christopher Lawrence’s 1984 PhD thesis | Medicine as Culture: Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment (31.5 MB PDF)

It may take a few minutes to download the PDF. It is stored on Dropbox and download times can vary significantly.

In both his biography of William Cullen and his edited selection of Cullen’s works, John Thomson includes a great deal of manuscript material from Cullen’s Nachlass, which is invaluable for anyone who studies Cullen [I should really say here 'John Thomson et al.' because Thomson corralled most of his family and a number of friends to help him create these books, and he was more akin to a project editor than a sole author. But that is another story...].

But one must exercise great caution when using this manuscript material for at least two reasons: (1) Thomson almost never indicates the sources he himself used for this material (and, for many items, how could he?) and (2) he had no qualms about altering the material he used, for the purposes of publication. And we know from a number of examples (which I don’t have time to discuss at the moment), with regard to the latter, that sometimes these alterations significantly change the meaning of the original source.

The challenges presented by using Thomson—which until now has been almost unavoidable—could be mitigated if we knew the manuscript sources from which he quotes. So, in the course of my PhD thesis, I have been on the hunt for just these sources.

In the past few weeks, I have discovered a major source for Thomson’s manuscript material, related to Cullen’s lectures on the Institutions of Medicine. I have no idea whether other Cullen scholars are already aware of its significance. In any case, Thomson seems to quote from it, almost exclusively, for instance, in his Works of William Cullen, whenever he discusses Cullen’s physiology. And since I am writing two chapters on this topic, it has become my base text.

For those interested, the source is MS B 4, held at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in Bethesda, MD. It is a 7 volume collection (over 2000 folio pages) of Lectures on the Institutions of Medicine, ostensibly for the academic year 1772-1773, the last in which Cullen lectured on this subject, and so can probably be considered his mature views on the particular topics contained within.

I can’t provide my reasons here, but I think these are the very volumes that Thomson himself possessed, rather than a common copy. Very exciting.