A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen/Blackwood, Henry

BLACKWOOD, Henry, brother to the subject of the preceding article, and his senior by some years, was educated under nearly similar circumstances, and, in 1551, taught philosophy in the university of Paris. Having afterwards applied himself to the study of medicine, he rose to be dean of that faculty at Paris, an office of the very highest dignity which could then be reached by a member of the medical profession. He appears to have been one of the earliest modern physicians who gave a sanction to the practice of letting blood. He published various treatises on medicine, and also upon philosophy, of which a list is preserved in Mackenzie's Lives of Scots Writers. He acted at one time as physician to the Duke of Longueville, with a salary of two hundred pistoles. At another time, when the plague prevailed at Paris, he remained in the city, and exerted himself so zealously in the cure of his numerous patients, as to gain universal applause. He died, in 1613 or 1614, at a very advanced age.