Cullen William

Cullen, William, physician, was born at Hamilton, Lanark, in 1710, and studied at Glasgow University. In 1729 he became surgeon in a merchant ship trading to the West Indies, and on his return acted as assistant to an apothecary in London. Continuing to study assiduously, in 1736 he started practice on his own account at Hamilton. After taking his M.D. at Glasgow in 1740, four years later, having married in the interval, he removed to that town, where he founded a medical school, and had as his pupil Joseph Black, the well-known scientist. In 1755 he was appointed professor of chemistry at Edinburgh, where his chemical and clinical lectures were soon largely attended, and here, at a later date, he successively held the chairs of materia medica, and theoretical and practical medicine. He was president of the Edinburgh College of Physicians from 1773 to 1775, and died in 1790. His principal works are his First Lines of the Practice of Physic, Institutions of Medicine, Synopsis Nosologiae Methodicae, and his Treatise of the Materia Medica.