July 23, 1870.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
77 
©Mtaarir. 
On the 17th July, at his residence, 33, St. John’s 
Wood Park, Benjamin Bkogden Orridge, Esq.,F.G.S., 
in the 57th year of his age. 
JAMES COPLAND, M.D., F.R.S. 
Force of character, with geniality of temperament, 
unusual powers of generalization and research, with 
literary accomplishments of a high order, were the moral 
and intellectual features of Dr. James Copland, who died 
on the 12th inst., after a brief but painful illness, at 
Kilburn. The doctor was by birth an Orkney man, and 
first saw the light in November, 1791. His education 
was commenced and carried to the University stage at 
the town of Lerwick, in Shetland, from which, at the 
age of fifteen, he came to Edinburgh; and with a view 
to qualifying for the Church, passed through the curri¬ 
culum of arts. After profiting to the full by the deep 
and varied culture of the Edinburgh curriculum, he 
abandoned the clerical for the medical career, and threw 
himself with characteristic energy into his chosen pur¬ 
suit. Four years’ assiduous attendance at the classes 
under the (then) efficient professoriate, qualified him to 
graduate as doctor in medicine in 1815, when with the 
instincts of so many of his countrymen, he migrated 
southward, and attempted to establish himself in Lon¬ 
don. He failed, however, to win immediate success, and 
after profiting as far as he could by the professional op¬ 
portunities afforded at the metropolitan schools, he visited 
Paris, where he availed himself of all the advantages of 
her c lini que. Thence he proceeded to Germany, in 
whose hospitals, filled to overflowing with the sick and 
hurt from the newly-terminated war, he was an indus¬ 
trious and vigilant observer. The febrile and dysenteric 
disorders of which he saw so much were now his chief 
study, and with a view to extending his knowledge of 
them, he took service under the African Company, and 
sailed for the Gold Coast. On his way thither, he 
touched at various settlements, such as Senegal, Gambia, 
and Sierra Leone, at which latter place three-fourths of 
the crew were stricken down with yellow fever, from 
which, however, his skilful and energetic treatment res¬ 
cued them all but two. He was the last to be seized, 
but the measures w 7 hieh had issued so happily for his 
patients, were applied with equal success to himself. 
Powerful tonics and stimulants were the remedies he 
chiefly relied on, as we learn from his ‘ Dictionary of 
Practical Medicine/ in which he gives a most interesting- 
account of the epidemic, and the mode in which he com¬ 
bated it. After a few months’ residence at Cape Coast 
Castle, he returned to Europe by way of Accra and 
Benin, and after a brief visit to his native Orkney, he 
again passed through Edinburgh and London for the 
Continent, where he sojourned chiefly at Paris, and at¬ 
tended her hospitals for some months. He returned to 
London, and established himself at the “Terrace,” at 
Walworth, having previously became a licentiate of the 
Royal College of Physicians, and physician to the Royal 
Infirmary for Diseases of Children. 
In 1821 began his medico-literary career. He contri¬ 
buted to the ‘ Quarterly Journal of Foreign Medicine ’ a 
number of papers on fever and the medical topography 
of the West Coast of Africa. After applying without 
success in the same year for the post of Government 
commissioner on the origin and nature of the yellow 
fever then prevailing in the Spanish peninsula, he con¬ 
centrated his energies on home-practice, established the 
South London Dispensary, and before the end of 
1821, he published his celebrated memoir on turpentine 
as a therapeutic agent, the value of which he had been 
so impressed with on the Gold Coast. In the January 
of the following year he took the editorship of the 
‘London Medical Repository/ and enriched its pages 
with a vast number of contributions on the most various 
topics, from public hygiene to private or consulting 
practice. Most of these articles found them way, in 
substance at least, into his great ‘ Dictionary of Prac¬ 
tical Medicine.’ In 1824 he translated and edited 
Richerand’s ‘ Physiology/ and threw out, in the notes, 
anticipations of those views on the nervous system which 
afterwards brought so much distinction to Dr. Marshall 
Hall. In 1825 he projected his ‘ Dictionary/ but he 
did not commence it till 1830, when the announcement 
of a rival work, supported by sixty contributors, sup¬ 
plied the doctor with the needed stimulus. Night and 
day for twenty-eight years he continued to labour at his 
work; and in spite of the incessant inroads made on his 
time by an increasing practice, he did not fail to subject 
every article to the most exhaustive consideration, and 
to embody his ripest judgment on its details in a stylo 
singularly forcible and effective. As a single-handed 
effort it has been compared to the Dictionaries of Bayle 
and Johnson; while its value, though diminished by the 
progress of science, will always be great enough to 
secure it an honoured place in the library of the phy¬ 
sician. In its abridged form, under the able editorship 
of his nephew, Mr. J. C. Copland, it has renewed its 
popularity with the rising generation of practitioners; 
while many of its suggestions have been silently adopted 
by the sanitary reformer or incorporated with special 
treatises on medicine. 
The doctor was unusually fortunate in the honours he 
received, among which we may single out his being- 
made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1833 ; a Fellow 
of the Royal College of Physicians in 1837; Gulstonian 
Lecturer in 1838; Censor of the College in 1841, 1842, 
and 1861; Croonian Lecturer in 1844, 1845, and 1846; 
seven times Councillor between 1844 and 1863 ; Lumleian 
Lecturer in 1854 and 1855, and Harveian Orator in 1857. 
He delivered his discourse on this latter occasion in 
Latin remarkable for its freshness and force,—not a 
cento of phrases, like the majority of such orations, but the 
work of a man to whom the language was almost native. 
For the last few years he had ceased to engage so exten¬ 
sively in consulting practice; and, though a constant 
frequenter of the societies, he fixed his residence out of 
town. To the last, however, he was always willing to 
give the poor artist or the struggling man of letters the 
benefit of his gratuitous advice ; while to all appearance 
his hale and vigorous physique gave promise of a 
lengthened continuance of his genial and philanthropic 
labours. But within the first week of July his old 
enemy, the gout, renewed the attack; and, in spite of 
every medical aid, he gradually sank till the 12th, when 
he died, in his seventy-ninth year. 
Climate of the Azores.—The Hon. E. Monson, in 
his consular report on the trade and commerce of the 
Azores, expresses regret that so few tourists visit those 
islands. He says they are chiefly Americans who prefer 
taking a southern route to Europe, and like to break the 
voyage by halting for a short time in Fayal; while the very 
few Europeans who find their way there are such as the 
casualties and exigencies of business compel to under¬ 
take a voyage from which they anticipate no pleasure. 
Thus these islands, replete though they are with objects 
of interest, no less to the man of science than to those 
who travel for mere amusement, will remain neglected 
until, in the process of time, the so much needed harbour 
improvements are completed sufficiently to encourage 
the visits of ocean steamers. The island of St. Michael’s, 
he says, should be peculiarly attractive to the invalid. 
It is blessed with a climate equable and mild, although 
somewhat humid. According to careful observations, 
the mean temperature of the winter months is 2° colder 
than Madeira, 5° warmer than Lisbon, 13° warmer than 
Nice, 12° warmer than Rome, and 12° warmer than 
Naples. According to the estimate of Sir James Clark, 
the mean annual temperature of St. Michael’s is 62° 40', 
that is about 2° less than Madeira during the whole 
