PEARSON. 



727 



to a widow, and she will have right to present 

 during her life. The magistrates of a royal burgh 

 cannot alienate the patronage of a church within 

 burgh. Where a patronage is given to one in 

 liferent, and another in fee, the liferenter is en- 

 titled to present. Where, however, (as may be 

 validly done,) the patronage is conveyed to the 

 heritors of a parish, fiars only are understood to be 

 meant. A presentation by a married woman must 

 have the concurrence of her husband. A tutor 

 may present to the churches of which his pupil is 

 patron ; and minors may present, their curators, if 

 they have any, giving their consent. A patron 

 cannot present himself to the benefice. The exer- 

 cise of the right of patronage may sometimes give 

 rise to questions of right; and it may be difficult 

 to determine whether the civil or ecclesiastical 

 courts have jurisdiction in these questions. The 

 judgment of the church courts is absolute in deter- 

 mining the fitness of the presentee for the pastoral 

 office ; but the Court of Session has the primary 

 and exclusive jurisdiction in questions relative to 

 the validity of the presentation. Although, how- 

 ever, a presbytery should erroneously reject a valid 

 presentation, or refuse to settle a presentee on 

 grounds not cognisable by them, they cannot be 

 compelled to settle him by civil diligence, which 

 the act 1612, c. 1, empowered a patron to employ 

 against a bishop who refused to collate a qualified 

 presentee. A person may be admitted by the 

 presbytery to the pastoral office ; but without a valid 

 title to the benefice, he is not entitled to the fruits. 

 Accordingly, when a presbytery reject a presenta- 

 tion, and, pending proceedings in the civil courts for 

 determining its validity, settle another minister, that 

 m nister is not entitled to draw the fruits of the 

 benefice. It would appear that in such a case the 

 Ministers' Widows' Fund would be entitled to the 

 stipend, as vacant stipend. The law of patronage, 

 including Calls, Jus devolutum, the Settlement of 

 ministers, &c., has been ably digested by Mr Dun- 

 lop in his separate treatise on patronage, (1833.) 

 For further information on subjects connected with 

 the constitution of the church of Scotland, see the 

 article Assembly, General, in the body of the Ency- 

 clopedia; also the article Scotland, subdivision 

 Church. 



PEARSON, RICHARD, M. D., an eminent phy- 

 sician, was a native of Birmingham, where he was 

 born in 1765. Agreeably to his own wishes, he 

 was designed for the medical profession, for which 

 he had cherished an early attachment, manifested 

 even in his boyhood by a taste for botany and an 

 insatiable curiosity to understand and examine the 

 structure of animals. Accordingly, at the usual 

 period, he entered upon the study of medicine, 

 under the tuition of Mr Tomlinson, an enlightened 

 practitioner in Birmingham; nor was he long in 

 justifying his choice or a profession, and affording 

 an earnest of his future excellence therein ; for, in 

 the first year of his noviciate, a gold medal, being 

 the first proposed by the Royal Humane Society, 

 for the best dissertation on the signs of death with 

 reference to its distinction from the state of sus- 

 pended animation, was unanimously adjudged to 

 him. He afterwards studied at Edinburgh, at that 

 time in the zenith of its fame as a medical univer- 

 sity, and he obtained in 1786, his degree with 

 honour. Here he numbered among his college 

 friends, Sir James Mackintosh, Dr Beddoes, Dr ] 

 Duncan, and other equally eminent men ; and, , 

 besides the usual course of medical study, he ac- , 



quired great proficiency in natural history and 

 botany, two sciences which powerfully influenced 

 the bent of his subsequent professional studies, 

 and were ever after among his favourite and un- 

 wearied pursuits. After two more years, which 

 were spent on the continent, in Germany, France, 

 and Italy, he settled as a physician in his native 

 town, Birmingham. Here, by the influence and 

 recommendation of his attached friend, Dr Wither- 

 ing, he soon succeeded that eminent practitioner 

 and botanist as one of the physicians to the Gen- 

 eral Hospital, and began to devote his active and 

 well-stored mind to the zealous exercise of his 

 profession, in which he very early acquired a high 

 reputation, and was enjoying an extensive and 

 rapidly increasing practice, when he was induced, 

 in the year 1800, to take up his residence in Lon- 

 don. His published works, during his continu- 

 ance in Birmingham, a period of about twelve 

 years, consisted of three dissertations, one on 

 phthisis pulmonalis, another on hydrophobia, and 

 the third on the epidemic bilious fever in 1798. 

 In London he published his " Observations on the 

 Epidemic Catarrhal Fever, or Influenza, of 1803," 

 which rapidly passed through many editions ; and, 

 in the following year his outlines of a plan for ar- 

 resting the progress of a malignant contagion 

 which was raging on the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean, and hourly expected in England, increased 

 his reputation, and gained him the notice of the 

 highest individuals both in and out of his profes- 

 sion. But the work which above all established 

 his fame in the medical world, and for which few 

 were so well qualified, by an extensive acquain- 

 tance with natural science as himself, was his 

 " Practical Synopsis of the Materia Alimentaria 

 and Materia Medica," the first part of which had 

 appeared anonymously so early as 1797. 



From this time Dr Pearson took his place 

 among the most distinguished members of the me- 

 dical profession in London. His co-operation was 

 solicited in the principal literary and scientific pro- 

 ductions of the time, and he was enrolled a fellow 

 of most of the learned societies in London, the 

 Medical and Medico-Chirurgical, the Linnaean, the 

 Antiquarian, and others. By the earnest desire 

 of the editor, the late arch-deacon Nares, he con- 

 tributed the medical reviews for the British Cri- 

 tic ; for a certain period he furnished the articles 

 on Medicine in Dr Rees's Cyclopedia, and was as- 

 sociated with the celebrated Dr Hutton and Dr 

 Shaw in the abridgment of the Philosophical 

 Transactions from their commencement. While 

 still in the enjoyment of a metropolitan reputa- 

 tion, he left London, and after a short residence 

 at Reading, and afterwards at Button among his 

 relations and friends, he again returned to Bir- 

 mingham, where he passed the remainder of his 

 life. His object in thus repairing to his native 

 place being not so much the desire of practice, as 

 of a retirement where he could enjoy the plea- 

 sures of medical society, little remains to be said 

 of his professional career, except that several of 

 those families who had formerly confided in him, 

 both in the town and in the country, were happy 

 in the opportunity of consulting him, and not a 

 few medical men gladly availed themselves of his 

 acknowledged experience. On the opening of the 

 medical school in Birmingham, he delivered the 

 first introductory lecture ; and to the success of it 

 his subsequent courses of lectures, were highly in- 

 strumental. The last professional acts of his life 



