LINNEAN SOCIETY OE LONDON. XXV 



his long services iu India had merited, when he was carried off 

 almost suddenly, and died at his residence. Uplands, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Colombo, on the 24th day of April, 1856, at the age 

 of 53. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1830. 



Sir Alexander Crichton, 3LD., F.R.S., a medical practitioner 

 of considerable eminence, and one of the oldest Fellows of the 

 Linnean Society, was the second son of IMr. Alexander Crichton, of 

 Woodhouselee and Newington, in the county of Mid-Lothian, 

 and was born at Edinburgh on the 2nd of December, 1763. After 

 completing his school education in his native town, he was appren- 

 ticed to Mr. Wood, an eminent surgeon in that city. At the 

 expiration of his apprenticeship, having first matriculated in the 

 university, he proceeded, in 1784, to London, and in the following 

 year to Leyden, where he obtained liis degree of M.D. From 

 Leyden he went to Paris, which he quitted in the summer of 1786, 

 and extended his tour of instruction into Germany, visiting suc- 

 cessively, during a period of three years, the schools of Stuttgard, 

 Vienna, Halle, Berlin, and Gottingen. In 1789 he established him- 

 self as a surgeon in London, and became a Member of tlie Royal 

 CoDege of Surgeons ; but disliking the operative part of the profes- 

 sion, he wdthdrew from that body in 1791 and became a Licentiate 

 of the College of Physicians. In the following year he published 

 a translation of Blumeubach's " Essay on Generation " ; and being 

 appointed, about 1796, one of the Physicians of the "Westminster 

 Hospital, he delivered in that institution the lectures on che- 

 mistry, materia medica, and the practice of physic. In 1798 he 

 published " An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental 

 Derangement," in 2 vols. 8vo, which added to the high rei^utation 

 he had acquired both at home and abroad as a skilful practitioner, 

 and assisted in introducing him into high professional practice. 

 In 1803 he was invited to become Physician in Ordinary to the 

 Emperor of Russia ; and a few years afterwards was appointed 

 Chief of the Civil Medical Department. For his various im- 

 portant services he received several Russian Orders, as well as the 

 second class of the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, w^hich, on his 

 receiving the honour of knighthood from King George IV. in 

 1821, he obtained permission to wear. Besides the works above 

 mentioned. Sir Alexander Crichton was author of two separate 

 publications on the Cure of Pulmonary Consumption, and of a 

 work entitled " Commentaries on some Doctrines of a dangerous 

 tendency in IMedicine, and on the General Principles of Safe 

 Practice," 1842. While in Russia, he edited, in conjunction with 



