GARTHSHORE, a
surname derived from lands of that name, now Gartshore, in the parish of
Kirkintilloch, Dumbartonshire. The family of Garthshore of that ilk is
of great antiquity. They possessed charters of their lands of Garthshore
as far back as the reign of Alexander II. On the death of Captain
Patrick Gartshore of that ilk, without issue in the end of the reign of
Charles I., the succession devolved on his immediate younger brother,
James Gartshore, D.D., parson of Cardross, but the estate being
incumbered with debts contracted by his brother while in the army, he
made it over to his next brother Alexander Gartshore, who was bred a
merchant. It continued in the family till the 19th century,
when Captain John Murray, born in 1804, 2d son of Sir Patrick Murray, 6th
bart. Of Ochtertyre, and nephew of General Sir George Murray (died in
1846), succeeded to the estate, and assumed the name of Gartshore, in
addition to his own.
The name has
been rendered eminent by having been borne by Dr. Maxwell Garthshore, a
skilful physician and accoucheur, son of the minister of Kirkcudbright,
and born in that town, October 28, 1732. At the age of 14 he was placed
with a surgeon and apothecary at Edinburgh, and after attending the
medical classes in the university, in his 22d year he entered the army
as assistant surgeon. In 1756 he succeeded to the practice of Dr. John
Fordyce at Uppingham, in Rutlandshire, where, in 1759, he married a
young lady, heiress to a small estate. In 1763 he removed to London,
where he practised with great reputation for nearly fifty years. He was
physician to the British Lying-in Hospital, and a fellow of the Royal
and Antiquarian Societies, and contributed several medical and
physiological papers to the Philosophical Transactions, the London
Medical Journal, &c. His first wife having died in March 1765, in 1795
he married a second wife, who predeceased him. Dr. Garthshore died, 1st
March 1812, at the age of eighty, leaving a fortune of £55,000. His
works are:
Dissertatio
Inauguralis de Popaveris usu, tam noxio quam salutari in parturientibus
ac Puerperis. Edin. 1764, 8vo.
Case of a
fatal Ileus. Med. Obs. And Inq. Iv. P. 223. 1770. Dissection.
Two cases of
the Retroverted Uterus. Ib. v. p. 381.
A remarkable
Case of numerous births, with observations. Phil. Trans. 1787, Abr. Xvi.
P. 294.
Biographical
account of Dr. Ingenhousz. Thom. Ann Philos. X. 161. 1817. Posth.
