the year 1800, in the 55th year of his age. With much personal and intellectual
vanity, Mr Cuickshanks was an excellent anatomist and able physiologist, and a
cool and skilful surgeon. He was generous and truly benevolent, literally going
about doing good. He was one of the medical men who had the melancholy honour
of attending Dr Samuel Johnson in his last illness. In 1773, he was married
to a lady from Dundee, who died in the year 1795, by whom he had four
daughters.
CULLEN, William, M.D., one of the most highly gifted and accomplished physicians that Scotland has produced, was born on the 15th of April, 1710,[1] in the parish of Hamilton, in the county of Lanark. His father was by profession a writer or attorney, and also farmed a small estate in the adjoining parish of Bothwell, and was factor to the duke of Hamilton. His mother was the daughter of Mr Roberton of Whistlebury, the younger son of the family of Roberton of Ernock. The family consisted of seven sons, and two daughters, and the subject of the present biographical sketch was the second son. His father dying shortly after the birth of the youngest child, his mother afterwards married Mr Naismyth, a writer in Hamilton.
Poverty is too often the inheritance of genius, and in the present instance, although in a respectable station of life, the parents of young Cullen, from the scantiness of their means, found it necessary to place him at the grammar school of Hamilton. Institutions of this kind, are conducted on a scale so peculiarly liberal and extensive in Scotland, that in them the rudiments of education are often better and more profoundly taught, than they are in schools frequented by the children of the richer and higher classes of society. Accordingly at this grammar school Dr Cullen received the first part of his education. There are people here, says Mr John Naismyth (the minister of the parish in 1792,) who remember him at school, and saw him in girl's clothes, acting the part of a shepherdess in a Latin pastoral.[2] We do not find any anecdotes of him at this early period of his life, which indicate the features of the character he afterwards displayed; but we are informed that he was here particularly distinguished by the liveliness of his manner;—by an uncommon quickness of apprehension and by a most retentive memory; qualities which he continued to possess to the Litest period of his life. Although the funds possessed by his family were not, as we have already intimated, very ample, he was sent from the grammar school of Hamilton to the university of Glasgow; and at the same time was bound apprentice to Mr John Paisley, who was a member of the faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, and enjoyed an extensive practice in that city. It does not appear that he went through a regular course of education at this seminary, but having early chosen medicine as a profession, the classes which he attended were probably regulated with a view to that object. "I am able," says Mr Bower, " to give only a very imperfect account of the manner in which medicine was taught at the time when Cullen's residence was fixed in Glasgow. There were professors whose business it was to give lectures on medical science; but these were on a comparatively small scale, and bore no proportion to the opportunities now afforded to students of physic in that university. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the principal means of improvement, which at this time he had within his power, were derived from observing his master's practice, and perusing such medical works as he could pro-
- ↑ In most of the biographical notices published of Dr Cullen, the date of his birth is referred to the year 1712, an error corrected by Dr Thomson, in his elaborate life of Dr Cullen, 8vo. 1832, who states the year of his birth to have been 1710, on the authority of the Session Record of the parish of Hamilton.
- ↑ Statist. Ace. of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 201.
