Sketch of the life of William McKenzie, M.D. (1791-1868), Her Majesty's Oculist for Scotland, surgeon to the Glasgow Eye Infirmary / [A. Freeland Fergus].

  • Fergus, A. Freeland (Andrew Freeland), 1858-1932.
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sketch of the life of William McKenzie, M.D. (1791-1868), Her Majesty's Oculist for Scotland, surgeon to the Glasgow Eye Infirmary / [A. Freeland Fergus]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    gives the discoverer a foremost place in the ranks of those that have benefited the human race. It was while he lived in Glasgow that Lord Lister evolved the theory that failure from inflammation after operation depended on micro-organisms and was therefore preventable. In the early sixties perhaps no School in the country was better equipped than Glasgow. Allen Thomson taught anatomy; Sir William Gairdner, practice of medicine; Joseph Lister, surgery; John Easton (of syrup fame), materia medica; and William McKenzie, ophthalmology. William McKenzie was all his lifetime, except for a short period when he was abroad and in London, connected with the City of Glasgow. His father was a manufacturer and a Glasgow merchant, and in the same city his distinguished son was born in the year 1791. He received his education in the Grammar School of his native place and in its University. When he entered Glasgow University, it was with a view of studying for the Presbyterian Ministry of the Church of Scotland, and, as a matter of fact, he had gone the length of enrolling as a student in the theological classes of that ancient seat of learning. What changed the course of events cannot now be ascertained. His son and his widow are long since dead, as are also, so far as the present writer knows, his most intimate friends, such as George Rainy and the late James Robertson. He had not gone far in his divinity studies until he gave them up altogether and entered the medical classes. So far as can be learned, his medical studies were chiefly carried out at the University of Glasgow and at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where, as an undergraduate he was a pupil of Dr. Richard Millar, who subsequently was the first professor of materia medica in the University, and was, in addition, a man of considerable and wide erudition, for he made several contributions to the study of the history of medicine which are even yet appreciated as valuable. There is reason to believe that McKenzie began his medical curriculum about the year 1810 and qualified to practise by taking the diploma of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, in the year 1815. In the days of which we speak the profession was seldom entered, even in Scotland, by means of the Universities. Few were the University medical graduates] to be found in practice, even in the larger towns of Scotland. Most men entered the profession by means of an apprenticeship and by the licence or diploma of such bodies as the Royal Colleges in Edinburgh and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow. Shortly after taking the diploma already mentioned, McKenzie determined to go further afield, and from i815 to 1817 or 1818, he spent his time in London and on the Continent, chiefly in Paris, Pavia, and Vienna. While on the Continent, he must have studied very widely, for