LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ROBERT WHYTT, M.D. 129 



University, attired in tiieir gowns and preceded by the mace, attended his 

 remains to the grave, while the whole body of the College of Physicians joined in 

 the procession. He was buried in the south burying-ground of the Greyfriars 

 Churchyard, where a tablet with a Latin inscription to him and his wife may 

 still be seen. 



A few months before Whytt's death, Dr John Gregory had been elected to 

 the Chair of Practice of Medicine on the retirement of Rutherford, whose health 

 now rendered him unable for the duties of the office. It had been expected by 

 Dr CuLLEN's friends that this vacancy would have made room for him in that 

 appointment. There was, however, jealousy of Cullen somewhere, and that 

 arrangement did not take place. On Whytt's death it seemed certain that 

 Cullen would become his successor ; nevertheless, Cullen appears at first to have 

 been unwilling to apply for the vacant chair, but he finally consented to become 

 Professor of the Institutes of Medicine. 



It has been supposed that Cullen entertained a jealousy of Whytt. It has even 

 been pointed out that Cullen, in the preface to his " First Lines," in making re- 

 ference to the distinguished followers of Stahl, singles out Porterfield and Simp- 

 son of St Andrews, far lesser lights, to the total exclusion of Whytt. But his 

 omission of Whytt on this occasion only proves how truly he had weighed the 

 doctrines of his former colleague ; he refused to account him a disciple of Stahl, 

 knowing that what Whytt taught of the soul he himself believed. The following 

 passage from Cullen's " Physiology," as published by Dr John Thomson, while it 

 reflects the esteem in which Cullen held his predecessor in the Chair of the In- 

 stitutes of Medicine, shows the aspect of Whytt's doctrines, as exhibited in this 

 Memoir, to be in strict accordance with the light in which Cullen viewed them : — 

 " My late colleague, Dr Whytt, has, I think, with great strength of argument, shown 

 that the phenomena even of the body itself cannot be explained but upon the sup- 

 position of a soul as a sentient principle. It is to this writer that I proposed to 

 refer you ; as he considers the argument with a view to the animal economy and 

 to physic, he is the proper authority to be consulted for the demonstration of the 

 immateriality of the soul in the economy, while in a living state. But I must 

 explain more particularly his opinion, and what has been the common one of 

 physicians also. Though they maintain the presence of a soul, — and I think it 

 necessary to the motions that occur in our material part, — yet they are far from 

 considering that there is anything left to it as a rational soul, but that the mutual 

 influence of the soul and body takes place by what may be called a physical 

 necessity : that there is nothing arbitrary in the power of the soul." " And Dr 

 Whytt, after having occasion to observe several instances of the influence of the 

 mind upon the body, says : ' Nor can we consider the mind as acting either igno- 

 rantly or perversely, when it sometimes excites such motions in the body as in- 



