and by an uncommon share of natural attained to very great and deserved DAVID ROSS, M.D.-A doctor of medicine of Rheims, of 27th August, 1726; was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians 20th March, 1749. He was appointed physician to St. George's hospital 19th October, 1733, and retained that office until his death, about the end of 1757 or beginning of 1758. DANIEL COX, M.D.-A doctor of medicine of St. Andrew's, of 8th November, 1742; was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians 26th June, 1749. He was elected physician to the Middlesex hospital 16th October, 1746, and resigned that office 23rd May, 1749. Dr. Cox died in January, 1750. We have from his pen Observations on the Epidemic Fever of 1741. 8vo. Lond. 1742. An Appeal to the public in behalf of Elizabeth Canning. 8vo. Lond. 1753. A Letter to a Friend on Inoculation. 8vo. Lond. 1757. GEORGE RAITT, M.D.-A doctor of medicine of Leyden; was admitted an Extra-Licentiate of the College of Physicians 22nd September, 1749. He practised at Huntingdon, and died on the 17th January, 1785. By deed, bearing date 18th January, 1780, Dr. Raitt endowed a charity at Huntingdon, which still bears his name, with three yearly rent charges for the purchase of bread and coals for the poor. JOHN WALTON, of Lincoln, was admitted an ExtraLicentiate of the College, 22nd June, 1750. RICHARD CONYERS, M.D., was one of three-Dr. William Pitcairn aud Dr. Kennedy being the others— upon whom the university of Oxford, at the opening of the Radcliffe library in April, 1749, conferred the degree of doctor of medicine by diploma. Admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians, 26th June, 1749; and a Fellow, 25th June, 1750; he was Censor in 1753 and 1757, and Harveian orator in 1756. Dr. Conyers, having been appointed in 1758, one of the physicians to the forces, was obliged to leave England in pursuance of the duties of that office. He therefore resigned his office of Censor 25th July, 1758, and Dr. Addams was appointed in his place. Dr. Conyers was physician to the Foundling hospital, and died about the year 1759. He had received his medical education at Leyden. He was entered on the physic line there 3rd November, 1727, being then twenty years of age, and he graduated doctor of medicine there in 1729 (D.M.I. de Morbis Infantum 4to.). He republished this essay, with additions and corrections, 8vo. Lond. 1748. WILLIAM PITCAIRN, M.D., was descended from the family of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, celebrated as the founder of the mechanical sect of medicine, who, having followed the fortunes of the exiled James, was for a short time professor of the practice of physic at Leyden. Dr. William Pitcairn was born in 1711, and was the eldest son of the Rev. David Pitcairn, minister of Dysart, in Fifeshire, by his wife Catherine Hamilton, a relative of the ducal family of that name. I can recover but few particulars of his education, general or medical, except that he studied for a time under Boerhaave at Leyden, where he was entered on the physic line 15th October, 1734, and graduated doctor of medicine at Rheims.* He was private tutor to James, the sixth duke of Hamilton, whilst that nobleman was studying at Oxford, and he accompanied him in 1742 in his travels on the continent. At the opening of the Radcliffe Russell's Letter to Dr. Addington on his Refusal, &c. &c. library in April, 1749, the university of Oxford, upon the recommendation of the trustees, conferred upon him the degree of doctor of medicine by diploma. Dr. Pitcairn then settled in London; was admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians 26th June, 1749; and a Fellow, 25th June, 1750. He soon obtained the confidence of the profession and of the public, and rapidly rose to eminence and fortune. He delivered the Gulstonian lectures in 1752; was Censor in 1753, 1755, 1759, 1762; Elect, in place of Dr. Letherland, 16th April, 1764; Consiliarius, 1764; and eventually President. To this office he was elected in 1775, and was annually re-elected for ten years, resigning in 1785, and then retiring from the practice of the profession. On the 30th September, 1785, a motion was made, seconded, and passed unanimously in the College,-"That the thanks of the College be given to Dr. William Pitcairn for his unremitting attention to the affairs of the College, and for the great zeal which he showed for its honour and prosperity during the ten years in which he held the office of President." Dr. Pitcairn was elected physician to St. Bartholomew's hospital 22nd February, 1750, and resigned his office there 3rd February, 1780. The governors of the hospital, to mark their sense of the value of his services, elected him one of the almoners on the 26th June, 1782; and he was appointed treasurer of the hospital 4th March, 1784. This circumstance, probably, hastened his retirement from practice, and he removed from his residence in Warwick-court to the treasurer's house within the hospital. Dr. Pitcairn was an accomplished botanist. He had a house in the Upper-street, Islington, opposite Cross-street, to which he frequently retired, and where he had a botanical garden five acres in extent, laid out with great judgment, and so abundantly stocked with the scarcest and most valuable plants as to be second only in size and importance to Dr. Fothergill's garden at Upton. At this, his suburban residence Dr. Pitcairn died on the 25th November, 1791. He was buried on the 1st of December in the church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less.* His garden was dismantled, and it and its contents sold by auction in May, 1792. Dr. Pitcairn was also physician to Christ's hospital, and a fellow of the Royal Society. Dr. Pitcairn did not publish anything. But tradition hands him down to us as an eminently sound and successful physician. He introduced and taught in the wards of St. Bartholomew's hospital a much freer employment of opium in the treatment of disease, and especially of fevers, than was customary with his contemporaries. Of his practice in this respect his Currus triumphalis Opii, as it was designated by some of his brethren-he was justifiably proud; and the more so when (through the medium of his nephew, the future Dr. David Pitcairn, then a student of medicine at Edinburgh) it reached the ear of Dr. Cullen, and was the means of saving the life of the son of that great master of physic. The case was thought desperate by Dr. Cullen, who, acting on what he had heard from the nephew, of Dr. Pitcairn's practice in London, administered to his son a larger dose of laudanum than was usually prescribed, and with complete success. His portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, engraved by Jones, now in the Censors' room, was bequeathed to the College by Elizabeth (Almack), the widow of David Pitcairn, M.D. JOHN BISHOP, of Crewkerne, was admitted an ExtraLicentiate of the College 14th September, 1750. CHARLES MORTON, M.D., was born in Westmoreland in 1716, and educated at Leyden. He was entered on the physic line there 18th September, 1736; settled in the first place at Kendal in his native county, and * "Vir bonus et doctus in medicina exercendâ peritus, et re herbaria curiosus cujus Hortus Botanicus herbis et fructicibus rarioribus turgebat: sed præ omnibus Proculeius alter notus in fratres animi paterni, in omnes benevoli." Oratio ex Harveiæ instituto habita 1792, auc. Gulielmo Cadogan, p. 19. + Gold-Headed Cane. 2nd ed. Lond. 1828. P. 185. practised there for a short time with much reputation. Returning to Leyden, he graduated doctor of medicine there 30th August, 1748 (D.M.I. de Tussi,) and was admitted an Extra-Licentiate of the College of Physicians 6th September, 1748. Shortly after this he removed to London; was elected physician to the Middlesex hospital 19th April, 1750; and admitted a Licentiate of the College 1st April, 1751. He was appointed physician to the Foundling hospital in 1754. On the establishment of the British Museum in 1756, Dr. Morton was appointed under-librarian of the manuscript and medal department; and on the death of Dr. Maty, in 1776, he succeeded to the office of principal librarian. He had been admitted a fellow of the Royal Society in 1752, and was elected secretary in 1759, an office he continued to hold for fourteen years. Dr. Morton, who is represented as a person of great uprightness and integrity, and was much admired as a scholar, died at his apartments in the British Museum 10th February, 1799, aged eighty-three, and was buried at Twickenham on the 18th, He was thrice married: 1. In 1744 to Miss Mary Berkeley, a niece of lady Betty Germaine, by whom he had an only daughter; 2. In 1772 to lady Savile, who died 10th February, 1791; and lastly, towards the close of 1791, to Elizabeth Pratt, a near relative of his second wife. Dr. Morton's only medical effort was a paper on muscular motion, in the "Philosophical Transactions." In 1759 he published an improved edition of Dr. Bernard's engraved Table of Alphabets, and in 1772 Bulstrode Whitelock's "Account of the Swedish Embassy in 1653 and 1654," 2 vols. 4to. In 1768 he was appointed, jointly with Mr. Farley, to superintend the publication of Domesday, but this task he soon relinquished. JAMES PARSONS, M.D., was born in March, 1705, at Barnstaple, co. Devon, and received his early education in Dublin, his father having removed to Ireland on receiving the appointment of barrack-master at Bolton. |