James Gregory (physician)

James Gregory (January 1753 – 2 April 1821), a Scottish physician, was the eldest son of John Gregory (1724-1773) and Elizabeth Forbes (d. 1761). He was born in Aberdeen.

Marriages

He married twice. His first wife, Mary Ross, died in 1784. They had no children.

In 1796 he married Isabella Macleod (1772–1847). They had eleven children: John (1797–1869); Hugh (1799–1811); James Craufurd (1801–1832); William Gregory (1803–1858) and his twin Donald Gregory (1803–1836); Jane Macleod (1805–1813); Elizabeth Forbes (1808–1811); Margaret Craufurd/Crawford (1809–1849), who married her first cousin, William Pulteney Alison (1790-1859); Georgina (1811–1877); Duncan Farquharson Gregory (1813–1844); and Isabella (1816–1818).

Education

James Gregory was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, King's College, University of Aberdeen, and the University of Edinburgh.

He accompanied his father to Edinburgh in 1764, and after going through the usual course of literary studies at that university, he was for a short time a student at Christ Church, Oxford. It was there probably that he acquired that taste for classical learning which afterwards distinguished him. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and, after graduating doctor of medicine in 1774, spent the greater part of the next two years in Leiden, Paris, and in Italy.

Medicine in Edinburgh

Shortly after his return to Scotland he was appointed in 1776 to the chair his father had formerly held, and in the following year he also entered on the duties of teacher of clinical medicine in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

On the illness of Dr William Cullen in 1790 he was appointed joint-professor of the practice of medicine, and he became the head of the School of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh on the death of Dr Cullen in the same year.

As a medical practitioner Gregory was for the last ten years of his life at the head of the profession in Scotland (for part of which time he was in partnership with Thomas Brown, M.D.).

He was at one time president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, but his indiscretion in publishing certain private proceedings of the college led to his suspension on the 13 May 1809 from all rights and privileges which pertained to the fellowship.

Besides his "Conspectus medicinae theoreticae", published in 1788 as a text-book for his lectures on the institutes, Dr Gregory was the author of "A Theory of the Moods of Verbs", published in the Edin. Phil. Trans. (1787), and of "Literary and Philosophical Essays", published in two volumes in 1792.

References

* Clarke, N., [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/65052 "Dorothea Alison (née Gregory) (1754-1830)"] , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 (Subscription required)
* Jacyna, L.S., [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/350 "William Pulteney Alison (1790–1859)"] , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 (Subscription required)
* Lawrence, P., [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11466 " Gregory, James (1753–1821)"] , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 (Subscription required)