1910-11.] 
Obituary Notices. 
687 
The late Dr Alexander Bruce, Edinburgh. By Dr J. H. 
Harvey Pirie. 
(Read November 6, 1911.) 
By the death of Alexander Bruce, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.E., F.R.S.E., 
of 8 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, on June 4th, at the comparatively early age 
of fifty-six, the Edinburgh Medical School has lost one of its most prominent 
teachers, and Great Britain one of her most brilliant investigators in the 
domain of diseases of the nervous system. Born in East Aberdeenshire in 
1854, Dr Bruce received his early education in Aberdeen. Entering Aberdeen 
University as first bursar at the early age of sixteen, he had a distinguished 
career in the Faculty of Arts, graduating with first-class honours in classics, 
and gaining the Simpson Prize for Greek, the Seafield Medal in Latin, and 
the Town Council gold medal as the best student of his year. He then 
proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he had an equally brilliant 
undergraduate medical career, gaining, amongst other awards, the Leckie- 
MacTier Fellowship, and again carrying off the blue ribbon of his year, in 
the shape of the Ettles Scholarship, when he graduated M.B., C.M. , with 
first-class honours, in 1879. Subsequent to graduation he held resident 
posts in the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, and at West Riding Asylum, 
Yorkshire, and studied abroad for a period at Paris, Frankfort, Heidelberg, 
and Vienna. Returning to Edinburgh, he acted for a time as assistant to 
the late Dr Argyll Robertson, but soon gave up this post to devote his 
energies to a growing general practice, and to original research in what was 
to become his life’s work — the structure and diseases of the nervous system. 
A firm believer in a thorough knowledge of pathology as a basis for 
medical research, he taught pathology for a time in the extra-mural medical 
school, and acted as pathologist successively to the Royal Hospital for Sick 
Children, the Royal Infirmary, and the Longmore Hospital for Incurables. 
Later he relinquished the teaching of pathology for that of the practice of 
medicine, and at the time of his death was one of the physicians and 
lecturers on clinical medicine in the Royal Infirmary. Some ten years 
ago he gave up general practice and restricted himself to consulting work, 
more particularly in connection with nervous diseases, in which branch of 
medical science he was by this time a well-known authority, and soon 
acquired wide recognition as a consultant. An indefatigable worker, he 
