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A note on Robert Willan's Edinburgh days

Robert Willan was born in the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1757. The family home was in a house built by his grandfather in 1713 and recently extensively renovated by the present owner. A barn built by Willan's parents in 1748 suffered damage by an earth tremor in 1970, a reminder that our heritage of historic buildings is not to be taken for granted. Robert Willan came to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1777 shortly before his twentieth birthday. After the customary 3 years' study he graduated MD in 1780 with a thesis 'On Inflammation of the Liver'. These are the sole recorded facts about Willan's sojourn in Edinburgh, contrasting with the relative wealth of information about his subsequent career in London. Why did Willan, an Englishman, come to Edinburgh ? There are three obvious reasons: First, his father graduated here in 1745, his thesis being dedicated to John Fothergill. Second, the Willans, like the Fothergills who befriended them, were Quakers and would have been excluded from Oxford and Cambridge under the Test Act. Third, Edinburgh offered unrivalled opportunities for medical education. The great London medical schools were yet to arise, whereas Edinburgh provided a combination of academic and practical tuition not otherwise available in Britain. The Medical Faculty of Edinburgh University was founded in the early eighteenth century, and was modelled on that of Leiden, inspired by the example of Hermann Boerhaave. Its fame eclipsed that of its parent and Boerhaave is alleged to have said that he had prayed God would send the Edinburgh professors larger salaries. This was a reference to the fact that their success was attributed to their small stipends, which obliged them to exert themselves to attract and retain students—whom they charged two to three guineas for a course of instruction. Although at this time the University was housed in old and inadequate buildings, it had a good library. Also the new Royal Infirmary, built in 1739 to the design of William Adam, provided beds for over 200 patients, and medical teachers had privileges within the Infirmary. Which teachers would have influenced young Robert Willan ? He was taught anatomy by Alexander Monro Secundus (three generations of Monros held the Chair of Anatomy for over a century). This Alexander Monro was not only a distinguished anatomist but an excellent teacher, now remembered principally because of the foramen which bears his name. Willan was a brilliant classical scholar, from which we can judge that he had a precise and orderly mind. Monro's teaching would have inculcated the habit of detailed physical observation and analysis. Botany was then an important medical subject through materia medica. John Hope was Professor of Botany and Superintendent of the Physic Garden. He had interrupted his own medical studies to go to Paris to work under Bernard de Jussieu, a leading exponent of the Linnaean system of classifica-