OBITUAKY. 



EMERITUS-PROFESSOR ALEXANDER HARVEY, M.D. 



ON 25th April, 1889, died one of the bygone generation of 

 Scottish biologists, characterised by wide sympathies with 

 scientific studies rather than by the concentration to some single 

 branch of science that is fast being forced upon the biologists of 

 the present day by the rapid expansion of the field of know- 

 ledge. 



Dr. Harvey was born on 20th April, 181 1, at Broomhill, in 

 Aberdeenshire, his father being Robert Harvey, M.D. By the 

 death of an elder brother, he succeeded, in 1 831, to property both 

 in Aberdeenshire and in the West Indies ; but. owing to great 

 depreciation in the value of the latter, he parted with the estates, 

 and devoted himself wholly to medicine, which he studied in 

 Dublin, Paris, London, and Edinburgh. In the last named city he 

 became L.R.C.S. in 1832, and M.D. in 1835. 



Already M.A. of Marischal College and University in Aberdeen, 

 he became Lecturer on Physiology in the Medical School of that 

 University, and for some time was also Lecturer on Practice of 

 Medicine in the rival School of Medicine attached to King's 

 College and University in Old Aberdeen. In 1852 he removed 

 from Aberdeen, and engaged in medical practice in Southampton, 

 from which town he went in 1858 to Cupar-Fife. 



In i860 the two Universities of Aberdeenshire were united by 

 the Executive Commission appointed in 1858, and among the new 

 Chairs then founded was that of Materia Medica, of which Dr. 

 Harvey became the first occupant. He discharged the duties that 

 fell to his care in an exemplary way until 1878, in which year ad- 

 vancing ill-health necessitated his resigning the chair, and remov- 

 ing to a less trying climate. 



The bent of his mind was towards the physiological aspects of 

 biology, and he published several pamphlets and longer works, 

 the scope of which is indicated by their titles : "A Remarkable 

 Effect of Cross-breeding " (185 1) ; " Trees and their Nature, or the 



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