Part 45

Two Edinburgh physicians--(Sir) Robert Sibbald and (Sir) Andrew Balfour--conspicuous among their fellows for their activity in promoting the cause of medical education and in the planning of the Royal College of Physicians, were the pioneers of the study of Botany as a science. Determined that the apprentices in Medicine should have adequate opportunity of learning the sources of many of the drugs in use, they acquired a lease of a small area of land in the neighbourhood of Holyrood Palace in which they arranged to cultivate medicinal plants, stocking it from their own gardens and from those of friends. They secured the services of James Sutherland--described as "knowing" in these matters--and placed their small garden under his care, with the obligation that he should instruct the apprentices and lieges in Botany. Sutherland cultivated his plants so well, and the instruction which he gave was so satisfactory, that ere long--no doubt through Sibbald's influence at Court--a portion of the Royal Flower Garden at Holyrood Palace was assigned for the cultivation of medicinal plants, and thither was transferred the collection already made in the hired area. Thus was founded, with the title of Physick Garden, a Royal Botanic Garden in Scotland, and the first Profession of Botany was set up therein by James Sutherland.

Of the earlier years of Sutherland we have no record. His success as a teacher induced the Town Council of Edinburgh--the body in which was vested at the time all the patronage of the University--to institute a Chair of Botany in the University, and to provide for practical teaching in another Botanic Garden belonging to the town. Sutherland was appointed to the Professorship and also to take charge of this new Town Garden, which, it may interest those who at the present day pass through the Waverley Railway Station to know, occupied a portion of the site of that station. Both these gardens were at some distance from the University, and apparently to save the time of the University students, perhaps also to create a teaching garden entirely within the jurisdiction of the College authorities, another portion of ground occupying a part of the Kirk o' Field, notorious as the place of Darnley's murder, was transformed into a herb-garden. Thus within a few years from the beginning of the movement for the providing of adequate facilities to students for learning about plants, three Botanic Gardens were made available.

During Sutherland's tenure of the Professorship teaching was given by him in these different gardens. It would appear, however, that Sutherland was at heart a numismatist, and whilst during the early period of his incumbency of office he had corresponded with many botanical institutions abroad, had introduced to the gardens new species of plants--many of them now established in the flora--and had published in 1683 a Catalogue of the plants in the Physical Garden, in later years his interest was centred in coins and medals. So great was the obsession that the patrons of the University, dissatisfied with his botany, compelled him to resign his Chair in 1706, to which they appointed Charles Preston, but Sutherland retained, until he retired in 1715, charge of the Royal Botanic Garden at Holyrood, of which by Royal Warrant he had been made Keeper with the additional personal recognition of Botanist to the King in Scotland. Thus the increase in number of gardens extended to the Professors, and from 1706 onwards to 1739 there were two rival Botanical Schools in Edinburgh--that of the Royal Garden, and that of the University.

Sutherland's place in relation to the development of scientific Botany in Scotland is that of pioneer in the teaching of systematic Botany from the living plants in relation to Materia Medica, and of first custodian and cultivator of plants for instruction in a public garden. His Catalogue is now a book of some rarity--of great rarity in complete state owing to the number of cancel pages--and its reproduction at the present time would have interest alike scientific and historic. It is the first published record of a collection of cultivated plants in Scotland. It tells us the plants which were recognised as indigenous at its date, and from its record we can by correlation with information otherwise obtainable discover the time of introduction to Scotland of alien plants, and thus obtain a basis for gauging their influence on the native Flora as we know it now.

Charles Preston who stepped into the University Chair of Botany vacated in 1706 by Sutherland, was a medical man, an active correspondent of Sloan, Pettiver, and other scientific men in the south. On his death in 1712, after a short tenure of office, George Preston his brother succeeded him and filled the chair until 1739. Both of the Prestons seem to have been chiefly interested in the Materia Medica side of Botany and their teaching was on the lines of it. They are referred to by their contemporaries as men of botanical knowledge and of critical judgment, and their correspondence indicates that they were in touch with the botanical life of their time. Their work in teaching was always in rivalry with that at the Royal Physick Garden. At first no doubt it was effective and useful owing to Sutherland's neglect of his garden, but when a capable active scientific Professor was placed in charge of this Garden the case for such rivalry and duplication of effort ceased, and it is no surprise therefore to find that when a vacancy occurred in 1739 the University Chair was filled by the appointment of the King's Botanist in Charge of the Royal Physick Garden, who was then Dr Charles Alston. And this combination continues to our own time by mutual consent of the Crown and the University.

Sutherland's retirement in 1715 from the Royal Physick Garden four years before his death, which took place in 1719 when he was over 80 years of age, may have been determined by his incapacity for the duties, but it is probable other influences were effective especially as the office of King's Botanist was a Household Appointment and only during pleasure. Were I merely to tell of incidents in the history of Botany in Edinburgh I would here introduce the story of Dr William Arthur, Sutherland's successor at the Royal Garden. Arthur has no botanical claims, but had influential political friends whose zeal on his behalf he ill requited by becoming one of the leaders in the Jacobite plot to capture the Castle of Edinburgh in 1715. Having failed in the attempt he escaped to Italy, where in 1716 he died from a surfeit of figs! Ignoble fate for a King's Botanist!

A man of real distinction now comes into our botanical history in Charles Alston--a clear observer and experimenter.

Charles Alston, born 24th October, 1685, was the third son of Thomas Alston, M.A. of Edinburgh and M.D. of Caen, one of an old Lanarkshire family settled at Thrinacre Milne and connected with the house of Hamilton. After boyhood at Hamilton, Alston went to the University of Glasgow, but before the period for graduation his father died leaving a widow and large family poorly provided for and young Alston's University career was stopped. Through the intervention of the Duchess of Hamilton Alston was then apprenticed in 1703 to a lawyer with a view to his entering the Estates Office of the Hamilton family. But "anatomy and the shops were more agreeable to him than Style Books or the Parliament House" and his "genius inclined more to Medicine," and in 1709 when the Duchess took him into her service as her "Principal Servant," in which position "he had aboundance of spare time," "he ply'd close the Mathematics and whatever else he thought of use to a student of Medicine, particularly Botany." With this training Alston, through the influence of the Hamilton family, was made King's Botanist, Professor of Botany, and Keeper of the Royal Physick Garden in 1716 after the disappearance of Dr Arthur.

He adopted a wise course on succession. Having put the Garden in such order as he could he hied himself to Leyden in 1718 to study under Boerhaave, and returning thence in August 1719 he graduated in Medicine at the University of Glasgow, became Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in June 1720 was able to begin his botanical lectures in the Garden, followed in November by a course on Materia Medica. These courses he carried on until 1739 when he was given the University Chair of Botany and Materia Medica, and the two Botany Schools were thus merged in one. Alston was now colleague of Munro, Rutherford, Sinclair, and other famous men who at this time were increasing the reputation of the University as a Medical School, and he continued to teach Botany and Materia Medica until his death in 1760.

Alston's teaching was mainly directed to the Materia Medica. His full course of lectures on the subject prepared for publication by himself appeared only as a posthumous work edited by his successor Dr Hope, and they reflect the best knowledge of the time, showing rational scepticism of the efficacy of many simples which experiment had not tested. Essays "On Opium," and "On tin as anthelmintic," and an "Index of Simples" published by him tell of his pharmacological investigations, to which his correspondence with Fothergill and others is also witness. The subject in this line to which he gave most attention and on which he wrote three dissertations based on experiments is that of Quicklime and Water--its efficacy in Calculus and also as an agent for keeping water sweet. From Alston, Stephen Hales, then in touch with the Admiralty upon questions of ventilation and other matters of sanitation, obtained early suggestions, and a long correspondence followed.

Alston, who had to earn his livelihood by medical practice, gave much time to the administration of the Botanic Gardens under his charge, and the elaborate lists which he prepared showing the disposition of plants in the Gardens, witness to his interest in their cultivation. His predilection in systematic arrangement was Tournefortian, and on the promulgation by Linnaeus of his "sexual system" in 1736, no writer was more trenchant than Alston in opposition to it, and by this he became widely known. His criticism was directed against it, not as a method of arranging plants by readily recognised characters, but from the standpoint of denial of the existence of sex. By various experiments as well as by argument, Alston endeavoured to disprove the necessity of the stamens for the development of fertile seed, citing cases of seed-production where no application of the "dust" from the stamens was possible--thus early recognising conditions which puzzled botanists for many generations afterwards and until the explanation of apogamy was supplied. One is tempted to wonder whether if the Linnaean system had not received the appellation "sexual" it would have roused the same condemnation from him as it did.

From his published work, notably the Dissertation on Botany (1754) a translation of a portion of his earlier Tirocinium Botanicum Edinburgense (1740), as also from some MS. of his lectures which still exist, we recognise the clearness and vigour of mind of Alston, and the precision of the man is made abundantly evident in the beautiful copper-plate writing in old script of his MS. Page after page is filled without blot or correction, and the whole systematised and arranged without flaw. Anatomical questions were dealt with by him in consonance with the knowledge of the time, mainly resting on Malpighi; but there is no rational treatment of physiological subjects, and this is the more surprising inasmuch as he was in intimate correspondence with Hales, and ought to have been acquainted with the fundamental experimental work of that physiologist. It may be that the fragments of record from which we have to judge are insufficient for correct appraisement, but on all the evidence we possess we must conclude that the two volumes of his Materia Medica give us a picture of the direction of his teaching, and that Botany in the hands of its leading expositor in Edinburgh was at this period only a hand-maid to Medicine.

The advent of Alston's successor, John Hope, was the dawn of new things. The influence of the work of Hales had reached Edinburgh. Comparatively few botanists of to-day have heard the name of John Hope otherwise than as that of a correspondent of Linnaeus and protagonist in this country of his system of classification, for these are the claims to distinction assigned to him by the historians of British Botany; and if one reckons the value of a man's life-work in science by his published writings alone, that of John Hope would be a minimum; for only such papers as those "On Rheum palmatum," "On Ferula Assafoetida," "On Eriocaulon septangulare in Scotland," are extant from his pen. Yet John Hope was a botanist inspired by the spirit of research who obtained by scientific experimental work and explained to his pupils facts of plant physiology some of which the botanical world learned from other workers only a hundred years afterwards. It is difficult to account for Hope's reticence. It may be that he intended to give his work to the world in the book upon Botany which had engaged his attention for many years and of which the MS. was in great part ready at the time of his unexpected death in 1786--if so, the botanical world has been the poorer through the want of Hope's book.

But if Hope did not give cause by published contributions to natural knowledge for his recognition in promoting the advance of Botany, he has always been remembered with gratitude for services of administration which he was peculiarly fitted to render and which profoundly affected the study of Botany in Edinburgh.

John Hope was born 10th May, 1725. The son of Robert Hope, a surgeon in Edinburgh, whose father had become one of the Senators of the College of Justice with the title of Lord Rankeillour. Educated at a famous school in Dalkeith, John Hope, who early showed a liking for Botany, entered the University of Edinburgh as a medical student and became a pupil of Alston. His botanical inclinations tempted him to break the course of his medical studies in Edinburgh to study Botany under Bernard de Jussieu in Paris. Returning to Scotland he graduated in Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1750, joined the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and began medical practice, giving to Botany such time as could be spared from the many ties of a successful practice. In 1760 Alston died, and John Hope became his successor, first of all in 1761 as King's Botanist at Holyrood and subsequently as Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in the University.

Soon after appointment Hope recognised that to continue to hold "colleges" in Materia Medica meant spoliation of his botanical work. The time had come for a separation of the two subjects of Botany and Materia Medica. Problems of the former now pressing were not those specially relating to medicinal plants. He therefore managed to carry through an arrangement by which he retained a chair as Professor of Medicine and Botany, and a new Professorship of Materia Medica was created. The importance of this step for botanical progress was great--it was not merely a question of time occupied but of scientific outlook.

Another movement in the direction of concentration of effort in the cause of Botany was initiated by Hope early in his official career--that for the creation of a new Botanic Garden in a locality outside the immediate influence of town atmosphere, in which the collections distributed over the Holyrood and Town Gardens could be combined. He accomplished his design, and not only this, but obtained from the Crown a permanent endowment for the new Garden. This was no small achievement--but the omens were favourable, for those patrons of science the Earl of Bute and, later, the Duke of Portland, were in power when the Professor made use of the great influence which his family possessed to secure his ends. A spreading city in time made the location of Hope's new Garden unsuitable, and it was transferred to the present site; but it was the effort by Hope which gave the Botanic Garden, and through it Botany, a status among institutions requiring subsidy and maintenance by Government in Scotland, and the obligation so imposed has been upheld notwithstanding an attempt in later years on the part of the Government to get rid of it--an attempt which the short-sighted policy of the University nearly allowed to succeed.

Hope's duties in his University Chair required of him, in addition to his botanical work, clinical teaching in the Hospital, and he also engaged in practice--this for a livelihood--and took active share in the affairs of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he was President at the time of his death, which occurred in 1786. Botany could therefore claim but a portion of his time.

Having established the new Garden, he laboured with assiduity to lay it out effectively, and then to enrich it with plants. His own ardour and enthusiasm impressed others, and his pupils in all parts of the world contributed to making the Garden a renowned collection of the rarest plants. Here Hope met his students, and here he carried out his many physiological experiments which gave them instruction.

His teaching was comprehensive. Although no longer tied by the calls of his Materia Medica, Hope did not ignore the subject entirely, but plants in this relation were not the groundwork of his instruction. Systematic and descriptive Botany, recognition of herbs, still found a place in it. In Alston the most strenuous opponent of the Linnaean method had gone; it found in Hope a no less strenuous advocate, to whose influence its rapid adoption in this country owed much. To what extent Hope made excursions with his pupils, there is no evidence. His Hortus Siccus and lists of plants with localities show that he was a field-botanist, and in correspondence with, if not more intimately acquainted with, the botanists who were working out the Scottish Flora at the period--such men, for instance, as Lightfoot, Stuart, Robertson. This we do know, that he encouraged his pupils to investigate the Flora of Scotland, giving yearly a gold medal for the best Herbarium, and Hope's "peripatetic pupils" is a designation met with in literature of the time. This aspect of Hope's teaching, consonant with the features of the botanical literature of the period, is that which has been commonly known. It is not however a complete picture. In Hope Scotland had a physiologist of originality and skill--who was not only informed upon the work of Hales, Duhamel, Mariotte and others, but who made his own experiments, clearly devised and effective, and whose catholicity is attested by his dealing with such problems as growth in length and thickness, effect of light and gravity, movement of water, healing of wounds, and the like. This physiology was an essential element of his teaching, and the effect upon students of contact with such direct wresting of truth from Nature must have been immense. Our knowledge of all this, only recently acquired, throws a new light upon Hope's character, and upon the influence which he appears to have exercised on the education of the time. The pity is that he left no published records, and that this bright period of brilliant research should have become obscured by the scholasticism inherent in the method of classification which he himself did so much to popularise.

In accordance with tradition, the Chair vacated by Hope was filled by the election of another medical practitioner in Edinburgh. Daniel Rutherford was born in Edinburgh 3rd November, 1749, the son of Dr John Rutherford, who as Professor was associated with Alston and others in the reformation of the Edinburgh Medical School. He was distinguished both as a classical scholar and as a mathematician, and after graduating M.A. at the University of Edinburgh, he entered on the medical curriculum, obtaining his diploma of M.D. in 1772. His thesis, when applying for the degree, was "De aero fixo dicto aut Mephitico," and by this he became famous through the distinction he established in it between carbonic acid gas and nitrogen, though he did not give nitrogen its name. The exposition he gave of his precise experimental work has been allowed to entitle him to be regarded as the discoverer of nitrogen, although shortly before the appearance of his thesis Priestley had practically, if less methodically, covered the ground. After graduation, Rutherford travelled in France and Italy, returning to Edinburgh in 1775 to begin the practice of Medicine, becoming Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he was afterwards President.

Rutherford was a chemist, and I have not discovered in any references to him expressions that would show he was at this period of his life interested in plants otherwise than as objects for his experiments in relation to the chemistry of the atmosphere. In seeking for a reason to explain his selection as Hope's successor in the Chair of Medicine and Botany, one may suggest either the general one of recognition of his scientific ability, or the more special one that in experimenting with plants he had been following on the lines of work so conspicuously developed by Hope. And of course at that time some general knowledge of Botany had to be the possession of every successful physician.

Like his predecessors, Rutherford had to undertake clinical teaching in the Hospital; he maintained also his private practice, and was keenly interested in the active literary world of his day in which his nephew (Sir) Walter Scott was a brilliant star. The Botanic Garden continued to hold its place as a scientific institution, and from the advent of William McNab as Principal Gardener in 1810, developed into one of the best known in the world. The recording of the plants of Scotland also proceeded apace; two of the Principal Gardeners of the Edinburgh Garden during Rutherford's Keepership--John Mackay from 1800-1802, and George Don from 1802-1806--being foremost in making known its floristic features, and their work Rutherford must have encouraged. From MS. notes of his lectures, I gather that the biological did not attract Rutherford, nor does it appear in the scanty records available that any special development of teaching equipment or of method took place during his tenure of office.

For some years before his death in 1819 Rutherford had been infirm; and speculation as to his successor had been rife. Robert Brown and Sir James Edward Smith were both spoken of. When the vacancy came Robert Brown refused it and Robert Graham, then Professor in the University of Glasgow, was appointed.

Robert Graham was born at Stirling 3rd December, 1786, the third son of Dr Robert Graham of Stirling (afterwards Moir of Leckie). After early education at Stirling, Graham was apprenticed in 1804 to Mr Andrew Wood, Surgeon in Edinburgh, and entered on the study of Medicine at the University, graduating M.D. in 1808. Thereafter he studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London for a year before settling in Glasgow, where he was also Lecturer in Clinical Medicine. During this period he published a dissertation "On continued Fever."

Botany in the University of Glasgow at this time had not reached the dignity of having a Professorship. It was attached to the Chair of Anatomy, but a separate lecturer undertook its teaching. To this lectureship Graham was appointed in succession to Dr Brown. This appointment was the prelude to his election as Professor in 1818 when the Chair of Botany was founded--a foundation which owed much to him through his influence with the Duke of Montrose, then Chancellor of the University, of whose house he was a cadet. One of the first efforts of Graham in his new position was directed to the completion of a scheme that was making for the formation of a Botanic Garden. In this he succeeded, and botanical teaching in Glasgow was thus equipped in 1819.

From this sphere in which he had initiated so much, Graham came to Edinburgh in 1820 as Professor of Medicine and Botany and was forced again to take up medical practice and clinical teaching in the Hospital, and in consequence to interest himself in the affairs of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he became President--all this, as in the case of his predecessors, in addition to his botanical work.

His first labour in relation to Botany was to transfer the Botanic Garden which Hope had made to a new site--that which it now occupies. Nearly two years were required to carry out the removal, to the success of which the skill of William McNab, the Principal Gardener, contributed greatly.