Burial enclosure of William and Robert Cullen

Image: © M J Richardson Taken: 18 Nov 2008

The inscription above the entrance to the enclosure notes that it was erected in 1864 as a memorial to William by the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and his great granddaughter Marion Fenella Marjoribanks. He was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in 1710, and died at Kirknewton in 1790. After an ‘apprenticeship’ in Glasgow, service as a ship's surgeon, and a period as assistant to an apothecary in London, he practised medicine from 1732 in various places in Scotland and in 1747 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry in Glasgow, and in 1751 to the Chair of Medicine. In 1755 he moved to Edinburgh and held the Chair until 1766. He then became Professor of the Institutes of Medicine (Physiology) and of the Practice of Medicine until his resignation in 1789. So he did not have much of a retirement. He was a man of great personal charm, a lively personality, very articulate, and with a rich imagination, so was a good lecturer. His contributions to medicine and his widely used textbooks earned him an international reputation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1777 [Information from a biography by W.P.Doyle on the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry website]. Robert, Lord, Cullen, possibly a son [1742-1810], was, according to his plaque, ‘an eminent judge, elegant scholar, and accomplished gentleman’.

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