556 
OBITUARY. 
of short duration, was suddenly arrested just when his future seemed to offer 
abundant promise of honourable distinction. By his unexpected removal Edin¬ 
burgh has been deprived of a good physician, a man of genius, and an amiable 
Christian scholar. Born at Whitby, i)r. Jackson prosecuted his medical studies 
m London, chiefly at St. George’s ilospital. He became a member of the Royal 
College of Surgeons of England, licentiate in midwifery, and a licentiate of tiie 
Apothecaries’ Company in 1855. He also studied in Paris. He afterwards 
^me to Edinburgh, and took the degree of J\I.D. in 1857, his thesis being on 
Climate, Health, and Disease. The subject which he thus chose for his inaugural 
dissertation was that to which he subsequently devoted great attention. He 
visited the Continent, and then settled in Edinburgh, being first a Fellow 
of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1859, and then a Fellow of the Royal 
College of Physicians in 1862. In 1861 he wrote a life of his uncle, the Rev. 
Dr. \Villiam Scoresby, well known for his Arctic travelling. It was after the 
death of his uncle that he assumed the name of Scoresby—having graduated as 
Robert Edmond Jackson. He devoted his attention specially to medical cli¬ 
matology, and in 1862 he wrote a work on the subject, in which he gave a 
topographical and meteorological description of the localities resorted to in winter 
and sunnner by invalids of various classes both at home and abroad. On the 
2 nd of lebruary, 1866, he read a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (of 
■which he became a Fellow in 1861) on the influence of weather upon disease 
and mortality. This paper was published in the Transactions of the society, 
and was illustra,ted by five coloured plates, beautifully executed by the Messrs, 
d onus ton, showing in a graphic manner the range of temperature, the winds, 
humidity, deaths by diseases at diflerent ages, etc. It excited much notice, 
and deservedly placed its author in a high position as a scientific observer. 
Having become a member of the Meteorological Society, he contributed several 
■valuable communications, some of which were published in its Proceedings, and he 
also conducted some important inquiries respecting climate under its auspices. 
Materia Medica was a subject to which Dr. Jackson also devoted his attention, 
and when his friend Dr. Douglas Maclagan became Professor of Medical Juris¬ 
prudence in the University, he succeeded him as extra Academical Lecturer on 
Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the College of Surgeons. The last work 
wlncu he published was ‘ A Notebook on Materia Medica, Pharmacology, and 
J-lierapeutics,’ in which he gives an excellent condensed view of the subject, 
and supplies a manual well adapted for students of medicine. Dr. Jackson 
acted for some time as one of the medical officers of the New Town Dispensary, 
and about tvyo years ago was elected Physician of the Royal Infirmary, and 
in that capacity he lectured on clinical medicine. During the active discharge 
of his duties in that institution he was seized with the disease of which he 
died. He contributed several medical papers to the ‘ Edinburgh Medical 
fJournal, particularly an interesting one on aphasia ; and the number of the 
Journal for February, just published, contains the last of his contributions, in 
■which he displays great medical acumen, and a thorough knowledge of the 
phenomena of disease. To ourselves he will be best known by his excellent 
analytical review of the Paris Codex, and we can only express our regret that 
the literature of French pharmacy has lost so admirable an exponent. We 
learn from a correspondent that Dr. Jackson was prepared to give Phar¬ 
maceutical students the advantage of attending his lectures on Materia Medica, 
on terms of a most liberal and advantageous kind ; and that he only waited for 
some Legislative enactment to bring this matter generally before chemists and 
druggists. Such a man we can ill afford to lose, and we desire by even this 
brief notice to do honour to his memory. 
