LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ROBERT WHYTT, M.D. 121 



for its contractility on nerves. In his argument against Haller on this point, 

 Unzer quotes Whytt's experiments, and Prochaska r efers to Whytt as his 

 leading authority after the following statement : — " It is now placed heyond 

 doubt by many distinguished men, that the irritability of muscles is dependent on 

 the nerves, and cannot exist without them." 



The work which has occupied so large a share of attention was published, as 

 before mentioned, in 1751; the two former of the relative treatises, under the 

 name of " Physiological Essays," in 1755, the latter, in the " Edinburgh Essays, 

 Physical and Literary," in 1756. A French translation of the Essays was 

 published in 1759 by Thebault. 



In the numbers of the " Monthly Review" for March and June of 1 752, there is a 

 full analytical review of the Essay, from the close of which the following quota- 

 tion is taken : — " Thus have we attempted a regular abstract of this curious 

 treatise, which must suffer, in point of force and perspicuity, from any consider- 

 able abridgment, and which cannot fail, in the whole, of entertaining our medical 

 and physiological readers. Besides the advantage of an appropriate and exten- 

 sive erudition, which manifests itself without affectation or pedantry, our author 

 discovers a great natural fund of thinking. His conceptions are happy ; his 

 reasoning clear and strong ; his expression elegant — free, to the best of our recol- 

 lection, from the least peculiarity of the Scottish idiom ; and so properly adapted 

 to his subject, that it seems to flow of course from his intimate consideration of 

 it."* 



In 1752, Whytt was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, to 

 the Transactions of which he afterwards contributed several papers. While he 

 was engaged in these labours, the results of which have been the subject of 

 commentary, considerable changes had taken place in the university. In 1754, 

 Monro Secunclus, to whose lectures some who are yet alive have listened, 

 was associated with his father in the Professorship of Anatomy. In the same 

 year Whytt's brother-in-law, James Balfour of Pilrig, was appointed Professor 

 of Moral Philosophy. In 1755, Dr William Cullen, then Professor of Chemis- 

 try in the University of Glasgow, was appointed Professor of Chemistry in Edin- 

 burgh, on the failure of Dr Plummer's health. Dr Plummer's course appears to 

 have been in a great measure confined to Chemical Pharmacy. In the " Medical 

 Essays," he published papers— on the Preparation of mercury and antimony, which 

 bears his name ; on the analysis of the Moffat water ; a case of Hydrophobia. 

 Fothergill says of him — " Plummer is no more ! He knew chemistry well. 

 Laborious, attentive, and exact ; had not a native diffidence veiled his talents as 

 a prelector, he would have been among the foremost in the pupil's esteem : such 

 was the gentleness of his nature ; such his universal knowledge, that in any dis- 



* Vol. vi. p. 467. 



