James Crawford Gregory

Dr James Crawford Gregory FRSE (1801-1832) was a Scottish physician and part of the great Gregory dynasty. His middle name is sometimes spelled as Craufurd.

Life

The Gregory grave, Canongate Churchyard, Edinburgh

He was born at 2 St Andrew Square in Edinburgh^[1] the son of Prof James Gregory and his wife Isabella MacLeod of Geanies.^[2] His siblings included the twins, William Gregory and Donald Gregory. He studied Medicine at Edinburgh University gaining a doctorate (MD) in 1824. He then spent three years in Paris, France studing under the anatomist Rene Laennec. In 1827, on his return to Scotland, he took on the role as Physician at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (then on Drummond Street) whilst also being physician to the Edinburgh Asylum on Bristo Place.

In 1828 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being Thomas Allan. He served as the Society’s Secretary from 1829 until death. ^[3] He was also Secretary to the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society.^[4]

During the cholera epidemic he worked at the specifically created Cholera Hospital, housed in Queensberry House on the Canongate in eastern Edinburgh.

He did not marry and lived in the family home all his life, the bulk of the family living at 10 Ainslie Place on the Moray Estate in west Edinburgh.^[5]

He contracted “malignant typhus” working in the hospital. Despite extreme attention from doctors John Abercrombie and Prof Alison he could not be saved. He died on 28 December 1832.^[6] Abercrombie and Alison also contracted typhus but Abercrombie survived the experience.

He is buried in Canongate Kirkyard in the family plot beside Adam Smith's grave in the south-west corner.

Publications

• First Lines on the Practice of Physic, commenced by William Cullen MD completed by James Crawford Gregory (1829, Bell & Bradfute)

References