Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Hamilton, David James
HAMILTON, DAVID JAMES (1849–1909), pathologist, born on 6 March 1849 at Falkirk, was third child and second son of the nine children of George Hamilton, M.D., practitioner in that town, who wrote numerous articles in 'Chambers's Encyclopædia,' by his wife Mary Wyse, daughter of a naval surgeon. A sister Mary married on 9 Feb. 1891, as his second wife, Charles Saunders Dundas, sixth Viscount Melville. At the age of seventeen Hamilton became a medical student at Edinburgh, and was attracted to pathology by the influence of Professor William Rutherford Sanders [q. v.]. After qualifying in 1870 he was house surgeon at the old Edinburgh Infirmary, resident medical officer at Chalmers' Hospital, Edinburgh,and for two years at the Northern Hospital, Liverpool, where he wrote the essay on 'Diseases and injuries of the spinal cord' which in 1874 was awarded the triennial Astley Cooper prize of 300l. awarded by the medical staff of Guy's Hospital. This enabled him to spend two years in working at pathology in Vienna, Munich, Strassburg, and Paris. In 1876 he returned as demonstrator of pathology to Edinburgh, where his teaching came as a revelation to the students. He was also pathologist to the Royal Infirmary. During Professor Sanders's illness (1880-1) he delivered the lectures, but was disappointed in not being elected his successor. In 1882, when an extra-mural teacher in Edinburgh, he was appointed to the chair of pathology founded by Sir William James Erasmus Wilson [q. v.] at Aberdeen. There his life's work was done. He entirely organised the teaching, so that at his resignation through ill-health in 1908 the pathological department had a European reputation and pupils in all parts of the world, as was shown by the volume of 'Studies of Pathology' (edited by W. Bulloch) which they dedicated to him in 1906 at the quater-centenary of the University of Aberdeen. The book contains an article by Hamilton on 'The Alimentary Canal as a Source of Infection' and his portrait. An enthusiastic and inspiring teacher, with a strong personality and great powers of organisation, he was the first to introduce the practical teaching of bacteriology into general class work. He initiated the bacteriological diagnosis of diphtheria and typhoid fever in the north of Scotland, and did much to apply pathology to the uses of ordinary life. He investigated the diseases of sheep known as 'braxy' and 'louping ill,' and was chairman of the departmental committee on this question appointed by the board of agriculture in 1901, which presented its report in 1906. He confirmed the description of the 'braxy' microbe given in 1888 by Ivar Nielsen and discovered the bacillus of 'louping ill.' He wrote widely on all branches of pathology, especially on the nervous system, tuberculosis, and other diseases of the lungs, and on the healing of wounds. His textbook on pathology (2 vols. 1889-94) was recognised as a standard work.
He was F.R.S. Edin., and in 1908 was elected F.R.S. London. In 1907 the University of Edinburgh made him an honorary LL.D. He was a connoisseur in music and a facile draughtsman. He died on 19 Feb. 1909 at Aberdeen, and was buried there. Hamilton married: (1) in 1880, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Griffith, by whom he had two sons and one daughter; (2) in 1894, Catherine, daughter of John Wilson of South Bankaskine, Falkirk; she died without issue in June 1908.
[Information from his brother, G. G. Hamilton, and from W. Bulloch; Proc. Roy. Soc. 81 B.]