53 
Sir John Eose Cormack. By Professor Maclagan. 
John Eose Cormack was bom on 1st March 1815, on the classic 
banks of Gala Water, in the Manse of Stow, of which parish his 
father, the Rev. John Cormack, D.D., was minister. His mother 
belonged to the old northern clan of Rose, her brother, Sir John 
Eose of Holm, being a distinguished Indian officer. 
Cormack’s primary education, like that of so many Scotchmen 
who have risen to distinction, was got in the parish school ; his 
secondary education at the High School of Edinburgh ; and his 
professional education at the University of Edinburgh, in which he 
became a student of medicine. During his whole University 
career he was a hard-working student, and took the degree of M.D. 
on 1st August 1837, on which occasion he got a University gold 
medal for his thesis on the subject of Death from the Entry of Air 
into the Veins. On this subject subsequently, both in a surgical, 
obstetrical, and medico-legal aspect, he made some further observa- 
tions in the years 1838 and 1850, and he again made it the subject 
of a thesis when he took the degree of M.D. of Paris in 1870. 
This was not, however, his first attempt at authorship, for he had 
the year before his graduation gained the prize of the Harveian 
Society of Edinburgh for an essay on Creasote, which he subse- 
quently published as a thin octavo. It is curious to note the 
affection which Cormack retained for his first scientific love, for 
Creasote figures not only in many of his prescriptions in future 
years, but we find that creasote water (cresylic acid) was used by 
him in his surgical experience during the siege of Paris in 1871, 
instead of the closely allied carbolic acid now so familiar to 
everybody. 
Having taken his degree with gold medal honours in 1837, he 
went to Paris, where he followed out his professional studies, chiefly 
under Andral as regarded medicine, and Velpeau as regarded 
surgery. He then returned to Scotland, and determined to settle in 
practice in Edinburgh, and became a Fellow of the Eoyal College 
of Physicians of Edinburgh 2nd February 1841. Practice came 
scantily, but Cormack could not be idle. He became a lecturer on 
Medical Jurisprudence in the Extra Academical School, and then 
