William Cullen

William Cullen (1710-1790) was the leading British physician of the 18th century, Cullen held chairs in chemistry, theory of medicine, and practice of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He recognised the importance of the mind in healing, and was the first to describe the value of administering placebo treatments ; the American poet William Cullen Bryant was named after him.

Cullen was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. After attending Hamilton Grammar School, he began a General Studies arts course at the University of Glasgow in 1726. He began his medical training as apprentice to John Paisley, a Glasgow apothecary surgeon, then spent 1729 as surgeon on a merchant vessel trading between London and the West Indies. After two years as assistant apothecary to Mr Murray of Henrietta Street, London, he returned to Scotland in 1732 to enter general medical practice in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire. From 1734 to 1736 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he became interested in chemistry, and he was one of the founders of the Royal Medical Society.

In 1736 he began medical practise in Hamilton, where he soon acquired a good reputation. He also continued his study of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry. In 1740 Cullen was awarded the degree of M.D. from Glasgow University. In 1741, he married and started his family. He became ordinary medical attendant to James Douglas, 5th Duke of Hamilton (1703-43), his family, and his livestock. In 1744, after the Duke's death, the Cullens moved to Glasgow.

In 1747, he was awarded Britain's first independent lectureship in Chemistry and was elected President of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In 1751 he was appointed Professor of the Practice of Medicine, but continued to also lecture on chemistry. In 1766 he was appointed to the chair of Institutes (theory) of Medicine atEdinburgh University and then became the sole Professor of Physic in Edinburgh. In 1755 he was enticed by Lord Kames to become Professor of Chemistry and Medicine at the University. In 1756 he gave the first documented public demonstration of artificial refrigeration; he used a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled , absorbing heat from the surroundings.

From 1757 he delivered lectures on clinical medicine in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. When Charles Alston died in 1760, Cullen took over his course of lectures on materia medica; he delivered an entirely new course, the notes for which were eventually published as A Treatise on Materia Medica in 1789.

In 1773 he was appointed First Physician to the King in Scotland and elected President of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. In 1777 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1783 he became a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

His major published works were First Lines of the Practice of Physic; Institutions of Medicine (1710): and Synopsis Nosologiae Methodicae (1785), which classified diseases into four major classes (1) Pyrexiae, or febrile diseases, as typhus fever; (2) Neuroses, or nervous diseases, as epilepsy; (3) Cachexiae, or diseases resulting from bad habit of body, as scurvy; and (4) Locales, or local diseases, as cancer.