William Cullen

Cullen worked between 1710 and 1790 across physician, chemist, farmer, university teacher and writer and 2 further recorded occupations. This article rests on 96 published texts, 3 digitised documents and 32 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

William Cullen studied at University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow and Hamilton Academy. Wolter Forsten Verschuir and Benjamin Rush are recorded as having studied under William Cullen. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is chemistry and medicine. Employment is recorded with University of Edinburgh. Distinctions recorded are Fellow of the Royal Society.

• Born — 15 April 1710 • Birthplace — Hamilton, Scotland • Place of death — Edinburgh, Scotland • Citizenship — British • Education — * University of Glasgow • University of Edinburgh • Illustration — Cameo of William Cullen (close-up), Hunterian Museum, Glasgow • Illustration — Burial sepulchre of William and Robert Cullen in Kirknewton William Cullen (15 April 17105 February 1790) was a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist from Hamilton, Scotland, who also served as a professor at the Edinburgh Medical School. Cullen was a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment: He was David Hume's physician, and was friends with Joseph Black, Henry Home, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Adam Smith, among others. He was president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (1746–47), president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1773–1775) and first physician to the king in Scotland (1773–1790). He also assisted in obtaining a royal charter for the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, resulting in the formation of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Cullen was a beloved teacher, and many of his students became influential figures. He kept in contact with many of his students, including Benjamin Rush, a central figure in the founding of the United States of America; John Morgan, who founded the first medical school in the American colonies, the Medical School at the College of Philadelphia; William Withering, the discoverer of digitalis; Sir Gilbert Blane, medical reformer of the Royal Navy; and John Coakley Lettsom, the philanthropist and founder of the Medical Society of London. Cullen's student and later rival John Brown developed the medical system known as Brunonianism, which conflicted with Cullen's. The competition between the two systems had knock-on effects in how patients were treated worldwide, especially in Italy and Germany, during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Cullen was also an author. He published a number of medical textbooks, mostly for the use of his students, though they were popular in Europe and the American colonies. His best known work was First Lines of the Practice of Physic, which was published in a series of editions between 1777 and 1784, and inventing the basis of modern refrigeration.

Cullen was born in Hamilton. His father William was a lawyer retained by the Duke of Hamilton as factor, and his mother was Elizabeth Roberton of Whistlebury. He studied at the Old Grammar School of Hamilton (renamed in 1848 The Hamilton Academy), then, in 1726, began a General Studies arts course at the University of Glasgow. He began his medical training as apprentice to John Paisley, a Glasgow apothecary surgeon, then spent 1729 as surgeon on a merchant vessel trading between London and the Antilles in the West Indies. After two years as assistant apothecary to Mr Murray of Henrietta Street, London, he returned to Scotland in 1732 to establish himself in general medical practice in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire. Also serving the town of Hamilton he had cured the Duke of Hamilton who thereafter became his patron. From 1734 to 1736 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he became interested in chemistry, and was one of the founders of the Royal Medical Society in his first year of study. In 1736 he began medical practice in Hamilton, where he rapidly acquired a high reputation. He also continued his study of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry. From 1737 to 1740 William Hunter was his resident pupil, and at one time they proposed to enter into partnership. In 1740 Cullen was awarded the degree of MD from Glasgow University. In 1741, he married and started his family. He became ordinary medical attendant to James Douglas, 5th Duke of Hamilton (1703–43), his family, and his livestock. In 1744, following the Duke's death, the Cullens moved to Glasgow. In Glasgow he gave extramural lectures for the university, on physiology, botany, materia medica, and chemistry. His great abilities, enthusiasm, and use of practical demonstrations for instruction, made him a successful and highly popular teacher, attracting large classes. At the same time he also maintained a medical practice. In 1747, Cullen was awarded Britain's first independent lectureship in Chemistry and was elected President of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In 1748 while in Glasgow, Cullen invented the basis for modern refrigeration, although is not credited with a usable application. In 1751 he was appointed Professor of the Practice of Medicine, although he continued to lecture on chemistry.

In 1755 he was enticed by Lord Kames to become Professor of Chemistry and Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in place of Prof Andrew Plummer. It was in Edinburgh, in 1756, that he gave the first documented public demonstration of artificial refrigeration. In 1748, an account had been published in The Edinburgh Physical and Literary Essays of an experiment in which Cullen used an air pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from the surroundings. This created a small amount of ice, but the process found no commercial application. From 1757 he delivered lectures on clinical medicine in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. On the death of Charles Alston in 1760, Cullen at the request of the students undertook to finish his course of lectures on materia medica; he delivered an entirely new course, notes of which were published in an unauthorised edition in 1771, but which he re-wrote and issued as A Treatise on Materia Medica in 1789. On the death of Robert Whytt, the professor of the institutes of medicine, in 1766, Cullen accepted the chair, at the same time resigning that of chemistry. In the same year, he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the professorship of the practice of physic (medicine), but subsequently an arrangement was made between him and John Gregory, the successful candidate, by which they both agreed to deliver alternate courses on the theory and practice of medicine. This arrangement continued until the sudden death of Gregory in 1773. Cullen was then appointed sole professor of the practice of physic, and he continued in this office until a few months before his death. In Edinburgh, Cullen lived off South Grays Close on the Royal Mile close to the old Scottish mint. He had a country residence at Ormiston Hill in Kirknewton, West Lothian. In 1783 Cullen (together with his sons) was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. On 8 January 1790 he was presented with a silver platter costing 50 guineas by the Lord Provost, Thomas Elder and the city baillies, for his long service in the university. He died in his home in the old mint in Edinburgh on 5 February 1790, but is buried in the churchyard at Kirkliston. His son Robert lies with him.

In 1741, he married Anne (or Anna) Johnstone, who died at the mint in 1786. He was father to the judge Robert Cullen, Lord Cullen and to the physician Henry Cullen. Cullen's eldest son Robert became a Scottish judge in 1796 under the title of Lord Cullen later Baron Cullen, and was known for his powers of mimicry.

• Thomson, John. An Account of the Life, Lectures and Writings of William Cullen, M.D. Volume 1. William Blackwood & T. Cadell, 1832. • Thomson, John; Thomson, William; Craigie, David. An Account of the Life, Lectures and Writings of William Cullen, M.D. Volume 2. William Blackwood & Sons, 1859. This book, in conjunction with its predecessor (see previous reference), is the standard biography of William Cullen's life and thought. • Doig, A., Ferguson, J. P. S., Milne, I. A., and Passmore, R (Editors). William Cullen and the Eighteenth Century Medical World. Edinburgh University Press, 1993. This collection of edited essays is the most recent, full-length work on the life and thought of William Cullen. It was the result of an exhibition and symposium at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1990 to commemorate the bicentenary of Cullen's death. * • Eddy, M. D. 'Dr. William Cullen, M.D., (1710–1790)', New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Noretta Koertge (ed.), (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2007).

• Donovan, Arthur L. Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Doctrines and Discoveries of William Cullen and Joseph Black. Edinburgh: University Press, 1975. • J V Golinski, "Utility and Audience in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry: Case Studies of William Cullen and Joseph Priestley," The British Journal for the History of Science (1988): 1–31. * • Eddy, M. D. The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750–1800 (Aldershot: 2008). • Eddy, M. D. "The Aberdeen Agricola: Chemical Principles and Practice in James Aderson's Georgics and Geology", in L. Principe (Ed.), New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007).

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William Cullen worked in chemistry and medicine. He was employed by University of Edinburgh. He belonged to Royal Society, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony and American Philosophical Society.

William Cullen is recorded with the occupation university teacher. Recorded as physician, chemist, farmer, university teacher and writer. Established in Bibliothèque nationale de France under 12564010t. Established in Library of Congress under n84806711. Established in FAST under 140005. Identity and origins. His recorded language was English. He was the child of William Cullen and Elizabeth Robertson. He married Anna Johnstone. 3 children are recorded: Henry Cullen, Robert Cullen and Margaret Cullen.