140 THE RISE OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES CHAP. 



published Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, in quarterly 

 parts, commencing in 1773, and consisting of concise reviews 

 of books, medical cases and news. 1 Neither in this case nor 

 in the earlier is there any reason to think that papers were 

 read or discussed before these societies, which were in fact 

 committees for collecting papers in which one person usually 

 did most of the work. Whilst the Edinburgh professors and 

 others had thus organised themselves for the diffusion of 

 medical knowledge, the students in the university took what 

 proved to be a further step in the development of a medical 

 society. It came about during the period of Fothergill's 

 study in Edinburgh, and some of his intimate friends were 

 the chief actors. 



In August 1734 Russell obtained some important material 

 for dissection, and invited his friends Cuming, Cleghorn, A. 

 Taylor and two others to join him. These six students were 

 accordingly occupied for nearly a month in dissections. They 

 then met together for a social evening, when it was resolved, 

 on the proposition of Taylor, that the six intimates should 

 continue to meet once a fortnight early in the evening at their 

 respective lodgings, and that a dissertation hi English or 

 Latin, on a medical subject chosen by the society, should then 

 be read and defended by its author against criticism. Cuming 

 read the first paper on rabies canina on December 20, Russell 

 following on virulent gonorrhoea, and Cleghorn, with a paper 

 on epilepsy. Next year most of these students left, but 

 Cleghorn continued the society, with Fothergill, Cullen and 



returned with silk " and tailors' needles, when she stitched it up hare-lip 

 fashion, and dressed it with white of egg. The patient was able to walk a 

 mile twenty-seven days later (vol. v. pt. i. 360, 4th ed.). On the continent 

 of Europe the earliest purely medical collections to be issued seem to have 

 been the Historia Morborum et Observationes, commenced at Warsaw in 1701, 

 and the Ada Medico, Berolinensium in 1717. These were, however, more 

 personal in their range. A hint of an early attempt to meet for medical 

 discourses, about 1650, is found in Glisson's work on Rickets (privaiis con- 

 ventibus, quos aliquot medici exercitationis in artis operibus gratia, interdum 

 habere solemus, mutuo invicem scriptis chartis communicavimus). There was 

 a small society of naval surgeons in London about 1745. Pettigrew, Med. Port. 

 Gall., W. Hunter, p. 2 ; G. Cleghorn, 06s. on Minorca, Dedication. 



1 Dr. Andrew Duncan was secretary ^o the society, and as time went on 

 the work fell entirely into his hands. Volumes were issued at lengthening 

 intervals until 1795, after which they were continued by the Duncans, senior 

 and junior, under the title of Annals of Medicine to 1804. A review of 

 Fothergill's case of Hydrophobia is in the fourth volume of the Commentaries. 

 The Physical Society, 1771, and several others, bear witness to the energy of 

 medical workers in Edinburgh at this period. In the library of the Medical 

 Society of London is a MS. volume containing nineteen papers, apparently read 

 before the Chirur go- Physical Society in Edinburgh in 1778. In 1789 a Medico- 

 Chirurgical Society was set up at Aberdeen. 



