SCIENTISTS OF THE NORTH-EAST OF SCOTLAND 113 
Fraser, Sir ALEXANDER.—The physician to Charles the Second, 
Fraser was of the ancient family of Frasers of Durris. He was markedly 
royalist in his views, a member of the Church of England, and when he 
accompanied Charles to Scotland in 1650 he proved particularly obnoxious 
to the Covenanters of his native country. He and others of his fellowship 
were described in September of that year as ‘ profaine, scandalous, and 
malignant,’ but he may have been a very estimable gentleman for all that. 
Grecory, JoHN.—The Gregories are dealt with appropriately under 
Mathematics, but mention ought to be made here of Dr. John Gregory, 
one of the most distinguished members of an illustrious family. He was 
born at Aberdeen in 1724, the youngest of three children of James 
Gregory, Professor of Medicine at King’s College and University, and 
grandson of the great mathematician. He himself occupied the chair of 
Medicine from 1755-6 to 1766 when he succeeded Rutherford in 
Edinburgh, being also appointed First Physician to the King in Scotland. 
From 1745 to 1747 he was a student at Leyden, where a fellow-student 
was ‘ Jupiter ’ Carlyle of Inveresk, in whose entertaining autobiography, 
edited by John Hill Burton, many interesting things are told of John 
Gregory. 
Harvey, WILLIAM.—But for the constraint of alphabetical order the 
name of this benefactor of the human race would have appeared at the 
top of all these lists of men of science. Before 1931 it would not have 
been possible to have included in a list of persons connected with 
Aberdeen, without doubt, the name of William Harvey. In that year, 
however, Dr. W. Clark Souter of this city, by most assiduous research in 
Aberdeen and elsewhere, established beyond uncertainty that William 
Harvey visited Aberdeen in August 1641—while on a visit with the King, 
Charles I, to Edinburgh—and that on August 20 he received the honour 
of being made a free burgess of the city, the most distinguished name in 
the burgess roll. Dr. Clark Souter’s monograph, Dr. William Harvey 
and Aberdeen, reprinted from the Aberdeen University Review of Novem- 
ber 1931, is one of the small books that, if it has not made history, in this 
respect has established it. 
Jounston, ArTHUR.—Dr. Arthur Johnston, born 1587 at Caskieben, 
Aberdeenshire (now Keith Hall, seat of the Earl of Kintore), is said to be 
the only physician who ever served poetry with his prescriptions. But he 
was a notable poet, in Latin particularly, whose competency in this respect 
was said to be superior even to that of George Buchanan. Arthur 
Johnston became a student of King’s College—Rector in 1637—but his 
medical course was taken abroad, and he had the degree of M.D. from the 
University of Padua, 1610. He travelled subsequently in Germany, 
Denmark, Holland, and France, where he settled, and devoted himself 
largely to the cultivation of his remarkable aptitude for Latin verse. 
McGricor, Sir James.—This distinguished army surgeon, whose 
impressive statue in bronze may be seen in the grounds of the Royal 
Army Medical College, London, was really the founder of the British 
Army Medical Service as known since the period of Wellington. James 
McGrigor, born in Strathspey, 1771, was a medical graduate of Marischal 
H 
