186 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
Sir Thomas R, Fraser. By Harry Rainy, M.A., M.B., 
C.M., F.R.C.P. Ed. 
(Read January 23, 1922.) 
By the death of Sir Thomas Richard Fraser on 4th January 1920 the 
Royal Society and the University of Edinburgh have lost one of their 
most distinguished ornaments, who, by the extent and carefulness of his 
research work, gained a European reputation, and left behind him an 
example that must serve as an inspiration to his successors in the depart- 
ment to which he devoted himself. He was born in Calcutta on the 5th 
of February 1841, and his education, both at school and at the university, 
was Scottish. In the Edinburgh University he had the advantage of 
having such men as Sir Lyon Playfair, Hughes Bennett, Sir James 
Simpson, and Sir Robert Christison as his teachers, whilst amongst his 
fellow-students and colleagues in later life he reckoned men like Professor 
Rutherford, Sir Thomas Grainger Stewart, Sir William Turner, Professor 
Crum Brown, Professor Sanders, and Lord Lister. Under the stimulus 
of such associates it is not surprising to find that he made his mark even 
whilst he was a student, and that his graduation thesis in 1862, of which 
the subject was “ On the Characters, Actions, and Therapeutic Uses of the 
Ordeal Bean of Calabar” ( Physostigma venenosum), embodied a research 
of the highest order, which brought him into prominence both at home 
and abroad, winning for him, in association with a later paper on the 
same subject which appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society, 
the Barbier Prize of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, which he received 
in 1868. Shortly after graduation he acted as resident physician in the 
Royal Infirmary, and in 1869 he was appointed assistant physician to 
the Infirmary. In 1863, largely on the strength of his research work, he 
was chosen assistant to the Professor of Materia Medica, a post which he 
held until 1870, when he relinquished it in order to become a lecturer on 
materia medica and therapeutics in the Extra-Mural School of Medicine. 
Four years later he was appointed medical officer of health for Mid- 
Cheshire, a district which at that time included a population of over 
123,000 persons. In those days the work which fell to be discharged by 
a medical officer was less sharply defined than it is at the present time, 
and Dr Fraser’s methodical mind and organising capacity led to the 
development of his work in a way which can scarcely be appreciated by 
