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RUTHERFORD, JOHN, a
learned physician of the eighteenth century, was the son of the reverend Mr
Rutherford, minister of the parish of Yarrow, in Selkirkshire, and was born,
August 1, 1695. After going through a classical course at the school of
Selkirk, and studying mathematics and natural philosophy at the Edinburgh
university, he engaged himself as apprentice to a surgeon in that city, with
whom he remained till 1716, when he went to London. He there attended the
hospitals, and the lectures of Dr Douglas on anatomy, Audré on surgery, and
Strother on materia medica. He afterwards studied at Leyden, under Boerhaave,
and at Paris and Rheims; receiving from the university of the latter city
his degree of M.D. in July, 1719.
Having, in 1721, settled as a
physician in Edinburgh, Dr Rutherford was one of that fraternity of able and
distinguished men,--consisting, besides, of Monro, Sinclair, Plummer, and
Innes,—who established the medical school, which still flourishes in the
Scottish capital. Monro had been lecturing on anatomy for a few years, when,
in 1725, the other gentlemen above mentioned began to give lectures on the
other departments of medical science. When the professorships were finally
adjusted on the death of Dr Innes, the chair of the practice of medicine
fell to the share of Dr Rutherford. He continued in that honourable station
till the year 1765, delivering his lectures always in Latin, of which
language it is said he had a greater command than of his own. About the year
1748, he began the system of clinical lectures; a most important improvement
in the medical course of the university. After retiring, in 1765, from his
professional duties, Dr Rutherford lived, highly respected by all the
eminent physicians who had been his pupils, till 1779, when he died in the
eighty-fourth year of his age. This venerable person, by his daughter Anne
Rutherford, was the grandfather of that eminent ornament of modern
literature, Sir Walter Scott. |
