It was in the middle of the session, 1772–73, that John Gregory died, leaving as we know his work in full swing. The university authorities were told, not of his illness, but of his death, and they were greatly at a loss as to who should continue the course of lectures which Professor Gregory had commenced with so much vigour. In this difficulty it was that James Gregory his son stepped forward; although he was only a medical student, he offered to deliver lectures on the Practice of Physic till the end of the term, and this proposal was most gratefully accepted by the university.

There is something which is perhaps not wholly unattractive in the idea of being the professor as well as the student; but at nineteen to lecture, and to lecture so well as to receive in consequence the offer of a chair at twenty-three, is a triumph which is rare indeed.

James Gregory was born in Aberdeen in 1753, and even as a child his mind always seems to have been keenly awake. He left the Grammar School of Aberdeen when he was eleven, having learned all that was to be learned there, and entered King’s College at an age at which clever boys now leave a preparatory school.

In the same year when his father removed to Edinburgh James Gregory entered that university, and there he spent the next years of his life. Later he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, of which his cousin was then dean. Oxford did not inspire him much, for indeed learning was then at a very low level there, but he continued his work at classics, and came to write Latin with fluency, Greek when there was occasion, and both ‘with classical elegance,’ if we are to believe his admiring contemporaries.

It is probable that it was at Oxford that James Gregory resolved to follow in his father’s footsteps, and become a doctor. There were of course many inducements, and all the influence of his family would be brought to bear on that side; but beyond this may we not believe that visions were given him of the golden fame that a hitherto unimagined mixture would bring to the name of Gregory unto all time? Whether the vision was vouchsafed to him or not, he returned to Scotland and began his medical studies in 1767.

It was a brilliant time in Edinburgh University. The medical professoriate contained a number of remarkable men. Cullen was there who had revolutionised medicine, Alexander Monro ‘Secundus,’ the greatest of a great family, Black who was acknowledged by Lavoisier as the pioneer of modern chemistry, John Hope the botanist and John Gregory. Under such teachers as these James made rapid progress, and although there are no tales of medals or prizes we cannot forget the instance of his medical foresight when he predicted an attack of gout for his father, which attack came, to his sorrow, so soon and so fatally after the prediction.

The Chair of the Practice of Physic was given to Cullen, and young Gregory went to St George’s Hospital, London, to gain a wider experience. He took his M.D. degree in Edinburgh in 1774: his thesis entitled De morbis Coeli Mutatione Medendis treats in detail Phthisis Pulmonalis, Hypochondriasis, and Gout, and concludes by noticing the advantage of change of air in the prolonging of human life. Startlingly wide in subject as this thesis appears to us, it was greatly admired for its style and minuteness, and thus Gregory, quitting Edinburgh for a time of study on the continent, left behind him a very favourable impression both of his talent and hard-working research.

Leyden, Paris, and Italy formed matter for enchanting letters which were the delight of his friends. Where are those letters gone to? How pleasant would it be to live through them a student’s life in these years. Whatever James Gregory could be, he was never dull, and besides in them we might have found the early tokens of that fierce temper which is the only pity of his professional career in Edinburgh.

There are two portraits of Gregory, or rather a portrait^[7] and a bust, which were said to be very like. A tall man, large, ungainly, of a rare presence. A man having authority impressed on every feature, radiant with affection for his friends, intolerant of enemies, asking his own way and getting his own way, loving, hating, thinking, speaking, feeling, always with intensest ardour. Here was a man whom none of his associates could regard dispassionately; they either loved him as a friend or hated him as an enemy.

Even in Edinburgh which was full of personalities, real individuals, men who were above all things themselves, Gregory stands out a great original. Lord Cockburn and Sir Robert Christison were not inclined to agree with each other on most subjects, yet about Gregory’s power there is a refreshing unanimity in their opinions.

In June 1773 he was elected to the Chair of the Institutes of Medicine. This chair had been practically vacant for three years, during which time it was offered over and over again to Alexander Monro Drummond, whose chief merit seems to have been that he united the names of the great teaching Monroes with that of Drummond, perhaps the noblest citizen Edinburgh has ever had. It has been suggested, however, that this was only done to keep the appointment open for Gregory, when he should have completed his studies, and certainly when he returned, his election was unanimous. He entered upon his duties with happy vigour. Teaching was, as with every Gregory, his greatest gift, and the classes grew steadily all the time he was professor. The university never made greater progress than it did about this time, the medical graduates rising in number from about twenty in 1776 to one hundred and sixty in 1827.

In the teaching of his class Professor Gregory daily felt the need for his students of a new book on the Theory of Medicine, so he wrote the Conspectus Medicinae Theoreticae which proved such a valuable handbook on the subject. This book was most successful, it passed through many editions, was translated into English and several other languages, was used sometimes as a medical book and sometimes as a Latin text, for the Latin was as much admired as the information which it imparted. Considering the success of this volume, it is surprising that this was James Gregory’s only medical publication: he alas wrote many books afterwards, but with the exception of some chapters on philology and some literary essays, he wrote nothing but controversial works, prodigiously long, violent, personal, and acrid; their only excuse that they were never written for selfish ends and their only merit that they were a source of infinite amusement to the general public.

Gregory lived in his father’s old house, No. 15 Canongate, and to this home he brought his first wife, the gentle Galloway girl, called Mary Ross, whose companionship was his, for such a short time in life’s journey. She died in 1784. In the years following her death he resumed his early classical studies, and it is a rather curious fact that he wrote nearly all the Latin epitaphs or dedications which were wanted for any purpose in Edinburgh from this time till his death. Principal Shairp, referring to Burns’ meeting with Gregory at Ochtertyre, describes how the poet ‘was charmed with the conversation of that last of the Scottish line of Latinists, which began with Buchanan and ended with Gregory.’

In 1787, he published his essay on the Theory of Moods and Verbs, and in 1792, Philosophical and Literary Essays. He was a great student of words, loved epigram, and spent much of his leisure in translating poetry. He was also interested in metaphysics, but as his great maxim was that in metaphysics there could be no discovery, his writings on this subject do not appear to have added much to his fame. Throughout these years, too, he kept up a constant correspondence with his cousin Thomas Reid, and proved himself just the appreciative critic that Reid required in the writing of his books. Dugald Stewart and Gregory together revised the proofs of Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers, and to them this book was dedicated.

‘I send you,’ writes Reid, ‘what I propose as the title of my Essays, with an epistle which I hope you and Mr Stewart will allow me to prefix to them. Whether your name should go first on account of your doctor’s degree, or Mr Stewart’s, I leave you to adjust between yourselves. I know not how to express my obligations to you both for the aid you have given me.’

Towards the end of 1790 it became apparent that Cullen, the greatest doctor of his time was failing in strength, and on his resigning the Chair of the Practice of Physic the Town Council reappointed him in kindly recognition of his great services to the university, but appointed James Gregory to be joint-professor during his lifetime with the sole right of survivorship. This comradeship did not last long, for in the same year Cullen died. To no less strong man could the task of succeeding this veteran teacher, who had raised the reputation of the Edinburgh School to such a height, have been wisely entrusted.

As Professor of the Theory of Physic, Gregory had shown remarkable gifts, but in his new subject his teaching was superb. Sir Robert Christison in his autobiography, says of him, ‘Equal in fluency as in choice of language, he surpassed all lecturers I have ever heard. His doctrines were set forth with great clearness and simplicity in the form of a commentary on Cullen’s First Lines of the Practice of Physic. His measures for the cure of disease were sharp and incisive. In acute diseases there was no ‘mÉdecine expectante’ for Gregory, he somehow left us with the impression that we were to be masters over nature in all such diseases, that they must of necessity give way before the physician who is early enough and bold enough in encountering them.’ He had a memory so clear that he was never known to forget a case, and in his lectures he made his students see not only the general features of a disease, but an actual case of it which had come under his care. He used stories and history, and his own experience to vivify his lectures, and no doubt he succeeded for he had seen many sides of life. He never had time for more than two-thirds of his subject in one course, but whatever he missed out he always discussed fevers and inflammations. In much that he taught he was in advance of his age. In observing how frequently rheumatic fever tends to heart disease; in limiting the use of blood-letting^[8] at a time when it was becoming almost a universal panacea with doctors, in urging a liberal dietary in certain stages of consumption, and in the invention and use of his mixture he showed that his views were in advance of those held by most of his brother physicians. Professor Gregory had an odd habit of wearing his cocked hat while he lectured.

It was in the summer of 1796 that dear old Thomas Reid, who was becoming very frail, was induced to pay a visit to St Andrew’s Square, to which Gregory had migrated. His daughter, Mrs Carmichael, was anxious to have the opinion of Dr Gregory, as to whether there was anything she could do to retard the bodily decay which increased daily in her father. It was a happy time to them all. Gregory delighted in the keenness of the old man’s mind. As he was not fit for much exercise, he passed his time in solving algebraical problems, and discussing abstruse subjects with Dugald Stewart. Gregory was no doubt busy. His practice increased daily, and besides this, he probably spent a good deal of his time in the house of Mr M’Leod of Geanies, the Sheriff of Ross-shire; to whose daughter, Isabella, he was married on the 19th of October, just ten days after Thomas Reid’s death.

Miss M’Leod was a very beautiful girl, both winning and attractive, if Raeburn’s portrait of her is true to life, and she made both a good wife and good mother. Among Raeburn’s other portraits, and interesting to us because they were the friends of the Gregories, are such men as Dugald Stewart, Principal Robertson, Blair, Home, Ferguson, Mackenzie, Francis Horner, and Jeffrey. How much is it Raeburn, one wonders, who makes these men and women so charming, for it is their looks and what we know of their lives, far more than their writings, that attract us. Principal Robertson, with all his sweetness and dignity, has only written histories which are now superseded. Jeffrey railed at Wordsworth. Blair’s sermons are but a lingering tradition. The eloquence of Dugald Stewart, which brought Melbourne, Lord John Russell, and Palmerston to Edinburgh University, is now forgotten. It is not by their books that we know these men, it is because we love them when we see their portraits; it is because Cockburn lets us know them in their homes—it is because John Brown, who lived early enough to be in touch with those who remembered them, has written about them lovingly and tenderly. They were delightful men, but more delightful in their lives than in their books. The witty criticisms of the Edinburgh Review have passed away; they were for their day—but the remembrance of Jeffrey’s pleasant after-intercourse with Wordsworth, the kindliness with which Gregory welcomed all the young Edinburgh reviewers into his house at a time when no other Tories except the ‘man of feeling’ and Archibald Alison would receive them, and the occasional permission which Principal Robertson gave little Henry Cockburn to feast off his cherry tree—these are memories which will appeal to the kindly hearts of all time.

Then it is amusing to read Dr Gregory’s critical letter to Burns, who must have required all his admiration for the great doctor to bear patiently the numerous suggestions which he showered upon him.

‘Dear Sir,—I take the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter and the copy of verses enclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit, I mean both fancy and tenderness, and some happy expressions, in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for you have great command both of expression and of rhymes; and you may judge, from the two last pieces of Mrs Hunter’s poetry that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall with great freedom give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. I wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs Hunter, who, I am sure, will have much pleasure in reading it. Pray give me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much amended as you please) of the “Waterfowl on Loch Turit.”

‘The “Wounded Hare” is a pretty good subject, but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it is not a good one: it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed, close rhymes. If I were you I would put it into a different stanza yet.

‘Stanza 1.—The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse, but they may pass. “Murder-aiming” is a bad compound epithet and not very intelligible. “Blood-stained” in Stanza III. line 4 has the same fault: Bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written “Why that bloodstained bosom gored” how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic nor a dignified nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman’s word: unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry.

“Mangled” is a coarse word. “Innocent,” in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may pass.

‘Stanza 4. “Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow” will not do at all: it is not grammar—it is not intelligible. Do you mean “provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for?” There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, “Feeling” (I suppose) for “Fellow,” in the title of your copy of the verses; but even “fellow” would be wrong: it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. “Shot” is improper too. On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare: it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say with a fowling-piece. Let me see you when you come to town, and I will shew you some more of Mrs Hunter’s poems.’

Perhaps when Burns submitted his lines, ‘On seeing a wounded hare limp by me, which a fellow had just shot at,’ he hoped for as kindly a criticism as Dr Gregory had given to Clarinda’s verses, which the poet had shown him in December 1787; but if so, he was much disappointed. ‘Dr Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me,’ wrote Burns soon after; and again, ‘I believe in the iron justice of Dr Gregory; but like the devils I believe and tremble.’ It was a curious friendship, but friendship it was. There is an English translation of Cicero, which the physician had given to Burns in Edinburgh in 1787, and on the fly-leaf of this is written, ‘This book, a present from the truly worthy and learned Dr Gregory, I shall preserve to my latest hour as a mark of the gratitude, esteem and veneration I bear the owner—so help me God.—Robert Burns.’ Clarinda’s desire to make Gregory’s acquaintance which is surely an indication of how much her Sylvander admired him, finds utterance in a letter of 1787, ‘Pray is Dr Gregory pious? I have heard so, I wish I knew him.’

It was at Lord Monboddo’s that Gregory first met Burns. Besides the queer old judge, who was made a laughing stock for saying that men originally had tails, there was his charming daughter, the beautiful Miss Burnet, to whom Gregory is said to have offered his heart and hand.

One of the stories that Lord Cockburn tells of Gregory is in connection with Miss Sophia Johnston (generally known in the Edinburgh of that day as ‘Suphy’) one of the Hilton family; about whom, because of her curious upbringing, there were many odd stories. ‘When Suphy’s day was visibly approaching, Dr Gregory prescribed abstinence from animal food, and recommended “spoon-meat” unless she wished to die. “Dee, doctor, odd, I’m thinking they’ve forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder!” However, when he came back next day, the doctor found her at the spoon-meat, supping a haggis—she was remembered.’

Gregory lived now, as we know, in St Andrew Square, having left the old home in the Canongate, but besides this he bought a house called Canaan Lodge, which was then at a sufficient distance from Edinburgh to be in the real country. Walking towards this house he might often be seen of an evening with his all too warlike stick over his shoulder, possibly the very stick with which he smote his brother physician Professor Hamilton within the sacred precincts of the university. The story does not end here, nor even at the Law Courts, where he was made to pay £100 damages to the infuriated object of his attack, but with Gregory, who as usual had the last word, and the last laugh in the matter, and said as he paid his fine, that he would willingly pay double for another chance.

It is really a pity, but no sketch of Professor James Gregory could be adequate without mentioning some of the more important of his professional feuds. Take the Infirmary for example, with which he was connected from so early a date as 1777, and where he made one of the most sweeping and necessary reforms that have ever taken place in the management of that institution. He early saw that it was neither for the good of the patients, nor for the good of the students, that the physicians and surgeons should attend the wards for only a month at a time, and against this he set himself with all the zeal of which he was capable. He disapproved the time-honoured privilege enjoyed by every member of the Royal College of Physicians, and every member of the Royal College of Surgeons, to doctor the Infirmary patients; and getting more and more enraged with the infatuation of his medical brethren, he presented a memorial to the managers of the Infirmary, expounding his views, that Infirmary appointments should be made either for life, or at least for a number of years, but unfortunately doing so in language, of which the following paragraph is but one specimen:—

‘Let us suppose that in consequence of this memorial, every individual member of the College of Surgeons shall to his own share, make forty times more noise than Orlando Furioso did at full moon when he was maddest, and shall continue in that unparalleled state of uproar for twenty years without ceasing. I can see no great harm in all that noise, and no harm at all to any but those who make it. Ninety-nine parts in the hundred of all that noise would of course be bestowed on me, whom it would not deprive of one hour’s natural sleep, and to whom it would afford infinite amusement and gratification while I am awake,’ etc.

Such bitter writing was not, however, solely on one side. On another occasion, by the consent of the Royal College of Physicians, ‘A narrative of the conduct of Dr James Gregory towards the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh’ was published, which opens with this ominous paragraph, ‘It is with great pain, that the Royal College of Physicians, not a numerous, but hitherto, they trust, a very respectable society, find themselves compelled to come before the public with a narrative of their internal dissensions. The intemperate and injurious conduct of one of their members however has now made this a matter of necessity. Like other collections of individuals, they have had their dissensions and disagreements, but till very lately they were always conducted with the temper and the language of gentlemen, and were begun and ended within the walls of the College. Dr James Gregory has introduced a new style and a new jurisdiction.’

There is not much to choose between in these samples of professional controversy, but on the whole Gregory was usually more right in his views, and more wrong in his expression, than the other side. In spite of these quarrels Gregory’s practice increased steadily. In 1818 his professional income was £2723, and in the following year £100 more, while in the same years he derived from his professorship by way of fees, £1364 and £1200 respectively. These figures represented a much larger sum in 1818 than they would in 1900, and give a substantial proof of Gregory’s popularity.

A story told of Professor Gregory is peculiarly touching. One day when he was giving out the tickets for his class, he had to go into another room to fetch something. When he came back he saw a student, who was waiting for his ticket, take some money off his table and put it into his pocket. The Professor gave him his pass and said nothing, but just as the lad was leaving the room, he rose up and laying his hand on his shoulder said, ‘I saw what you did, and I am so sorry. I know how great must have been your need before you would take money. Keep it, keep it,’ he added, seeing that the student meant to give the stolen money back to him, ‘but for God’s sake, never do it again.’

Sir Walter Scott has remembered also how Professor Gregory on one occasion gave a very ready reply to a learned member of the Scottish Bar. He was giving evidence about a man, who in his opinion, was insane. On a cross-examination, the professor was obliged to admit that the person in question played an admirable game of whist. The eminent counsel thought he had made a point. ‘And do you seriously say, Doctor,’ he added, ‘that a person having a superior capacity for a game so difficult, and which requires in a pre-eminent degree, memory, judgment, and combination, can be at the same time deranged in his understanding?’ ‘I am no card player,’ replied the doctor, ‘but I have read in history that cards were invented for the amusement of an insane king.’ Needless to say, he won his case!

In 1818 Gregory had a serious carriage accident, in which his arm was broken, and from this shock he never really recovered, though we still see him in the midst of work. He was one of a deputation from the University of Edinburgh to congratulate George IV. on his accession to the throne, and while in London he received the honour of a private audience of the king. During that visit his thoughts went back often to his time of study in London, and to all the prosperity that had come to him since. He had received almost every honour which his profession could bring him. He had been President of the College of Physicians. He was made king’s physician to George III., and his commission had been most graciously renewed (during this visit) by George IV. Innumerable societies had bestowed their honorary membership upon him, and many towns had given him the privilege of their freedom, but he felt that his days were nearly over.

During the last year he had attacks of difficulty of breathing, which made it impossible for him to lecture after Christmas 1820. The end came in April. He died of hydro-thorax at the age of sixty-eight.

Of Gregory’s eleven children only five survived him. Two of them were in their turn to become teachers. William, afterwards Professor of Chemistry in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and Duncan Farquharson, the Cambridge mathematician.

There was not lacking one token of the love and esteem in which the great professor was held. The voices of his rivals were hushed. His friends mourned for him, and the town where he had been such a familiar figure arranged a public funeral for him. He lies buried in the family vault in the Canongate Churchyard.

‘Vir priscae virtutis, per omnes vitae gradus et in omni vitae officio probatissimae.’