Henry Dewar (physician)

His father was John Frazer, minister of the Associate Church at Auchtermuchty, in Fife, Scotland; his mother was Margaret Erskine. He became minister of the Associate Church at Saltcoats in Ayrshire, in 1796, but within months inherited an estate through his mother, at Lassodie, Beath, in the Fife coalfield. The inheritance required that he changed his name to Dewar: it originated with his great-grandfather Ralph Erskine and his first wife Margaret Dewar. At this point Dewar left the ministry.{{cite book|author=George Robertson|title=Topographical description of Ayrshire; more particularly of Cunninghame|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZvEHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA157|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1820|page=157}}[http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/38.html Scottish Mining, Lassodie History.]

Dewar retrained as a doctor at Edinburgh University gaining an MD in 1804.{{Cite book |url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |title=Former Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783–2002: Part 1 (A–J) |author=C D Waterston |author2=A Macmillan Shearer |publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh |isbn=090219884X |date=July 2006 |access-date=18 September 2015 |archive-date=24 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124115814/http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |url-status=dead}} He then began a new life as an army surgeon, with the 30th Regiment of Foot.Edward Mansfield Brockbank, Sketches of the Lives and Work of the Honorary Medical Staff of the Manchester Infirmary, from its foundation in 1752 to 1830 when it became the Royal Infirmary (1904), pp. 214–5; [https://archive.org/stream/sketchesoflivesw00broc#page/214/mode/2up archive.org]. In Egypt under Ralph Abercromby, he underwent some formative experiences, writing later on dysenteryObservations on diarrhoea and dysentery, particularly as these diseases appeared in the British campaign of Egypt in 1801 (London, 1805) and ophthalmia. He also came under the influence of French physicians (Savaresi, Larrey, and Desgenettes).Catherine Kelly, Medicine and the Egyptian Campaign: The Development of the Military Medical Officer during the Napoleonic Wars c. 1798–1801; [http://www.cbmh.ca/index.php/cbmh/article/viewFile/1364/1333 PDF, p. 334.]

Dewar graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1804, with a dissertation De ophthalmia Aegypti.{{cite book|author1=Henry Dewar|author2=George Husband Baird|author2-link=George Husband Baird|title=Dissertatio medica inauguralis de ophthalmia Aegypti: quam annuente summo numine ... D. Georgii Baird S.S.T.P. academiae Edinburgenae praefecti ... pro gradu doctoris ...|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R4sDPwAACAAJ|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1804|publisher=Excudebat Gulielmus Creech Academiae Typographus}} He was a Manchester Infirmary staff physician, from 1804 to 1808, a common step for Edinburgh medical graduates because of the breadth of professional experience there.{{cite book|author=Donald Stephen Lowell Cardwell|title=Artisan to Graduate: Essays to Commemorate the Foundation in 1824 of the Manchester Mechanics' Institution, Now in 1974 the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XwfSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA51|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1974|publisher=Manchester University Press ND|isbn=978-0-7190-1272-3|pages=51–}} He became a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1806.Complete list of the members & officers of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, from its institution on 28 February 1781, to 28 April 1896 (1896), p. 22; [https://archive.org/stream/completelistofme00manciala#page/22/mode/2up archive.org]. He then returned to Edinburgh, becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians there and lecturer at the Medical Institution. He may have dropped medical practice, and become a writer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1816.{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/membershipdirect08asli#page/566/mode/2up |title=Membership Directory / Aslib Computer Group |year=1788 |accessdate=7 April 2013}} His proposers were Sir David Brewster, Andrew Coventry, and John Barclay. In 1816 he was also elected a member of the Aesculapian Club.{{Cite book|title=Minute Books of the Aesculapian Club|url=http://archives.rcpe.ac.uk/calmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DEP%2fAEC%2f1&pos=2|location= Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh}} and of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.{{Cite book|url=https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ww4e59xv|title= A Record of the Edinburgh Harveian Society|last=Watson Wemyss|first=Herbert Lindesay|publisher=T&A Constable, Edinburgh|year=1933|language=en}}{{Cite book|title=Minute Books of the Harveian Society|url=http://archives.rcpe.ac.uk/calmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DEP%2fHAR%2f1%2f1%2f1&pos=17|location= Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh}}

In 1819 he was elected a member of the Wernerian Natural History Society alongside the botanist James Robinson Scott and Robert Kaye Greville.Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, vol 3, p.539

In his later life he lived at 37 Nicolson Street in Edinburgh's South Side.Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory, 1820-1 The house stood immediately opposite Surgeons' Hall but was demolished in the late 19th century to make way for a small department store.

He died on 18 January 1823 and was buried in St Cuthbert's Churchyard on the following day. The grave lies in the north extension facing St John's church.

Dewar engaged in an embittered controversyA letter to Thomas Trotter, M.D : occasioned by his proposal for destroying the fire and choak damps of coal mines with Thomas TrotterA Proposal for Destroying the Fire and Choak-Damps of Coal Mines…Addressed to the Agents and Owners of Coal Works (Newcastle: J. Mitchell, 1805); and his "second address". on the chemistry of choke damp and fire damp. Trotter had proposed "oxygenated muriatic gas" (i.e. hydrochloric acid) as a fumigant.[http://www.dmm-gallery.org.uk/books/hcmgb140.htm Durham Mining Museum, Robert L. Galloway, A History of Coal Mining in Great Britain, Ch. XIV.] As far as chemistry went, both their theories were inaccurate. Dewar was a friend of the Newcastle physician John Clark, and Trotter's criticism of Clark has been given as one possible reason for the personal attacks included with the scientific and practical arguments Dewar gave.{{cite book|author1=Brian Vale|author2=Griffith Edwards|title=Physician to the Fleet: The Life and Times of Thomas Trotter, 1760–1832|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=olAUU-9ncTcC&pg=PA180|access-date=2 May 2012|date=20 January 2011|publisher=Boydell & Brewer|isbn=978-1-84383-604-9|pages=180–3}} A scale or chemical slide rule mentioned by Thomas Charles Hope as "Dr. Dewar's" has been considered to be unpublished work of Henry Dewar.{{cite journal|title = Letters: Chemical Slide Rules|journal = Bull. Hist. Chem.|volume = 13–14|pages = 72–73|year = 1992–1993|url = http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mainzv/HIST/bulletin_open_access/num13-14/num13-14%20p72-73.pdf|first = William D.|last = Williams}}

An inquiry into the principles by which the importance of foreign commerce ought to be estimated (1808) was an economic pamphlet. It was taken to be a comment on the Continental System, and a reply to William Spence. Spence's Britain Independent of Commerce (1807) had come under heavy criticism. Dewar was somewhat sympathetic to Spence's positive views of autarky.{{cite book|author1=Thomas Thomson|author2=Richard Phillips|author3=Edward William Brayley|title=The Annals of philosophy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EsM4AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA462|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1813|publisher=Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy|page=462}}{{cite DNB|wstitle=Spence, William}}

Dewar wrote an early paper on what was then called "double consciousness", now diagnostically identified with dissociative identity disorder. It is considered that Dewar was alluding to the celebrated case of Mary Reynolds of Pennsylvania, which was published in 1816 by Mitchill.{{cite book|author1=James Hogg|author2=Peter Garside|title=The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself, With a Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts and Other Evidence by the Editor|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0PYlm9IOXycC&pg=PR54|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1824|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=978-0-7486-6315-6|pages=54–}}{{cite book|author1=Patricia B. Sutker|author2=Henry E. Adams|title=Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uEx84FQPYoAC&pg=PA264|access-date=2 May 2012|year=2001|publisher=Gulf Professional Publishing|isbn=978-0-306-46490-4|page=264 note}} He wrote in 1817 on a smallpox outbreak at Cupar, giving statistics showing the effectiveness of vaccination.{{cite book|author=Ch. Ch Steinbrenner|title=Traité sur la vaccine ou Recherches historiques et critiques sur les résultats obtenus par les vaccinations et revaccinations ...|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KSzDbYYYp-0C&pg=PA56|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1846|publisher=Labé|page=56|language=fr}}

Dewar wrote a Treatise on Universal Grammar (1816),{{cite book|author=Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester|title=Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LpRIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR6|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1819|publisher=The Society|page=vi}} and on other topics, for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. He began a translation, Universal Geography, of work by Conrad Malte-Brun. He wrote also for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zfYQAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA532 |title=Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – Google Books |year=1823 |access-date=7 April 2013}}

He married Helen Margaret Spence (1800-1870), an American from Philadelphia, in May 1809.{{cite book|author=Sir Walter Scott|title=The Edinburgh annual register|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gzFdAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA323|access-date=2 May 2012|year=1811|publisher=John Ballantyne and Co.|page=323}} They had six children. {{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/scottishrecordso35scotuoft#page/n53/mode/2up |title=Scottish Record Society. [Publications] |year=1898 |accessdate=7 April 2013}}Ebenezer Erskine Scott, The Erskine-Halcro genealogy: the ancestors and descendants of Henry Erskine ... his wife, Margaret Halcro of Orkney, and their sons (1895), pp. 41–2; [https://archive.org/stream/erskinehalcrogen1895scot#page/40/mode/2up archive.org].{{cite web|url=http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth29785/m1/871/ |title=History of Texas, together with a biographical history of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson counties : containing a concise history of the state, with portraits and biographies of prominent citizens of the above named counties, and personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families, Page: 814 | The Portal to Texas History |publisher=Texashistory.unt.edu |date=3 April 2013 |accessdate=7 April 2013}}Grave of Henry Dewar, St Cuthberts Churchyard

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Category:1771 births

Category:1823 deaths

Category:19th-century Scottish clergy

Category:19th-century Scottish medical doctors

Category:19th-century Scottish writers

Category:19th-century Scottish male writers

Category:Members of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh