William Cullen (179)

Elected to the American Society.

William Cullen (15 April 1710–5 February 1790) was a medical physician and professor, and member of the American Philosophical Society by his election in 1768. Born in Scotland and educated at the University of Glasgow, Cullen apprenticed with a well-regarded surgeon apothecary and served as a ship surgeon for a time, before settling into practice in 1732. He undertook deeper medical training at the University of Edinburgh (1734–36) where he and others founded the student Royal Medical Society, before completing his MD at the University of Glasgow in 1740. After a time in private practice he returned to teach there, offering courses in materia medica and botany (influenced by Linnaeus), as well as chemistry, which for Cullen became a focal point. Over the 1740s, he elevated the study of chemistry as worthy of study separate from medicine and pharmacology. He was named professor of medicine at Glasgow (1751) before taking the chair of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (1755); there, he later became professor of the institutes of medicine (1766) and finally professor of the practice of medicine (1773). Cullen’s most substantial achievement—among an array of accomplishments—was as a generous and influential teacher of students, among whom numbered APS members (and the founders of Philadelphia’s medical college) John Morgan, William Shippen Jr., Adam Kuhn, and Benjamin Rush. Consider just one mark of his influence: students took a one-off series of lectures on materia medica and issued an unauthorized publication in 1772, which Cullen sought to block, until discovering that the work was so popular he felt compelled to offer corrections (for a portion of the profits); late in life, he rewrote the entire volume. His many medical publications stemmed from his classroom lectures and preponderated throughout early America. His honors were many, including elected Fellowships in the Royal College of Physicians (1756) and the Royal Society of London (1777), and he was a founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1783). Tireless, only ill health drove him from his professorship in late 1789; after his death at his home just months later, Benjamin Rush delivered a public eulogy verging on hagiography, so grand was Cullen’s influence on the burgeoning world of medical knowledge. (PI, DNB)