Henry Dewar (physician)

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Grave of Dr Henry Dewar, St Cuthberts, Edinburgh

Henry Dewar of Lassodie MD

FRSE (1771–1823),[1] originally Henry Frazer or Fraser, was a Scottish minister turned physician, known as a writer.[2]

Life

His father was John Frazer, minister of the Associate Church at

Ralph Erskine and his first wife Margaret Dewar. At this point Dewar left the ministry.[1][3][4]

Dewar retrained as a doctor at

30th Regiment of Foot.[6] In Egypt under Ralph Abercromby, he underwent some formative experiences, writing later on dysentery[7] and ophthalmia. He also came under the influence of French physicians (Savaresi, Larrey, and Desgenettes).[8]

Dewar graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1804, with a dissertation De ophthalmia Aegypti.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1816.[12] His proposers were Sir David Brewster, Andrew Coventry, and John Barclay.[5] In 1816 he was also elected a member of the Aesculapian Club.[13] and of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.[14][15]

In 1819 he was elected a member of the Wernerian Natural History Society alongside the botanist James Robinson Scott and Robert Kaye Greville.[16]

In his later life he lived at 37 Nicolson Street in Edinburgh's South Side.[17] The house stood immediately opposite Surgeons' Hall but was demolished in the late 19th century to make way for a small department store.

He died on 18 January 1823 and was buried in St Cuthbert's Churchyard on the following day. The grave lies in the north extension facing St John's church.

Works

Dewar engaged in an embittered controversy

fire damp. Trotter had proposed "oxygenated muriatic gas" (i.e. hydrochloric acid) as a fumigant.[20] As far as chemistry went, both their theories were inaccurate. Dewar was a friend of the Newcastle physician John Clark, and Trotter's criticism of Clark has been given as one possible reason for the personal attacks included with the scientific and practical arguments Dewar gave.[21] A scale or chemical slide rule mentioned by Thomas Charles Hope as "Dr. Dewar's" has been considered to be unpublished work of Henry Dewar.[22]

An inquiry into the principles by which the importance of foreign commerce ought to be estimated (1808) was an economic pamphlet. It was taken to be a comment on the Continental System, and a reply to William Spence. Spence's Britain Independent of Commerce (1807) had come under heavy criticism. Dewar was somewhat sympathetic to Spence's positive views of autarky.[23][24]

Dewar wrote an early paper on what was then called "double consciousness", now diagnostically identified with dissociative identity disorder. It is considered that Dewar was alluding to the celebrated case of Mary Reynolds of Pennsylvania, which was published in 1816 by Mitchill.[25][26] He wrote in 1817 on a smallpox outbreak at Cupar, giving statistics showing the effectiveness of vaccination.[27]

Dewar wrote a Treatise on Universal Grammar (1816),[28] and on other topics, for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. He began a translation, Universal Geography, of work by Conrad Malte-Brun. He wrote also for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[1][2][29]

Family

He married Helen Margaret Spence (1800-1870), an American from Philadelphia, in May 1809.[30] They had six children[31][32][33] including James Dewar, Donald William Dewar (1825-1851), Dr Henry Andrew Dewar (1812-1861), Mary Dewar (1810-1869) (who married Dr Gilman Kimball).[34]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Erskine Beveridge, A Bibliography of Works relating to Dunfermline and the West of Fife (1901), p. 60 note 3; archive.org.
  2. ^ a b Sir Walter Scott (1824). The Edinburgh annual register. J. Ballantyne and Co. p. 320. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  3. ^ George Robertson (1820). Topographical description of Ayrshire; more particularly of Cunninghame. p. 157. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  4. ^ Scottish Mining, Lassodie History.
  5. ^
    ISBN 090219884X. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  6. ^
    Edward Mansfield Brockbank, Sketches of the Lives and Work of the Honorary Medical Staff of the Manchester Infirmary, from its foundation in 1752 to 1830 when it became the Royal Infirmary (1904), pp. 214–5; archive.org
    .
  7. ^ Observations on diarrhoea and dysentery, particularly as these diseases appeared in the British campaign of Egypt in 1801 (London, 1805)
  8. ^ Catherine Kelly, Medicine and the Egyptian Campaign: The Development of the Military Medical Officer during the Napoleonic Wars c. 1798–1801; PDF, p. 334.
  9. George Husband Baird (1804). Dissertatio medica inauguralis de ophthalmia Aegypti: quam annuente summo numine ... D. Georgii Baird S.S.T.P. academiae Edinburgenae praefecti ... pro gradu doctoris ...
    Excudebat Gulielmus Creech Academiae Typographus. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  10. ISBN 978-0-7190-1272-3
    . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  11. ^ Complete list of the members & officers of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, from its institution on 28 February 1781, to 28 April 1896 (1896), p. 22; archive.org.
  12. ^ "Membership Directory / Aslib Computer Group". 1788. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  13. ^ Minute Books of the Aesculapian Club. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
  14. ^ Watson Wemyss, Herbert Lindesay (1933). A Record of the Edinburgh Harveian Society. T&A Constable, Edinburgh.
  15. ^ Minute Books of the Harveian Society. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
  16. ^ Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, vol 3, p.539
  17. ^ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory, 1820-1
  18. ^ A letter to Thomas Trotter, M.D : occasioned by his proposal for destroying the fire and choak damps of coal mines
  19. ^ A Proposal for Destroying the Fire and Choak-Damps of Coal Mines…Addressed to the Agents and Owners of Coal Works (Newcastle: J. Mitchell, 1805); and his "second address".
  20. ^ Durham Mining Museum, Robert L. Galloway, A History of Coal Mining in Great Britain, Ch. XIV.
  21. ISBN 978-1-84383-604-9
    . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  22. Bull. Hist. Chem.
    13–14: 72–73.
  23. ^ Thomas Thomson; Richard Phillips; Edward William Brayley (1813). The Annals of philosophy. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy. p. 462. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  24. ^ "Spence, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  25. ISBN 978-0-7486-6315-6
    . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  26. ISBN 978-0-306-46490-4
    . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  27. ^ Ch. Ch Steinbrenner (1846). Traité sur la vaccine ou Recherches historiques et critiques sur les résultats obtenus par les vaccinations et revaccinations ... (in French). Labé. p. 56. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  28. ^ Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester (1819). Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. The Society. p. vi. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  29. ^ Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – Google Books. 1823. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  30. ^ Sir Walter Scott (1811). The Edinburgh annual register. John Ballantyne and Co. p. 323. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  31. ^ "Scottish Record Society. [Publications]". 1898. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  32. ^ Ebenezer Erskine Scott, The Erskine-Halcro genealogy: the ancestors and descendants of Henry Erskine ... his wife, Margaret Halcro of Orkney, and their sons (1895), pp. 41–2; archive.org.
  33. ^ "History of Texas, together with a biographical history of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson counties : containing a concise history of the state, with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens of the above named counties, and personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families, Page: 814 | The Portal to Texas History". Texashistory.unt.edu. 3 April 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  34. ^ Grave of Henry Dewar, St Cuthberts Churchyard

External links

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