Andrew Duncan (351)

Andrew Duncan (17 October 1744-5 July 1828) was a physician and member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1774. Born in Pinkerton, Scotland to merchant and shipmaster Andrew Duncan and his wife Catherine, Duncan pursued an education at St. Andrews University, earning a M.A. degree in 1762. Later that year he went on to study medicine at Edinburgh University. He served as president of the Royal Medical Society in 1767 before traveling to China as a surgeon on the East India Trading Company ship, Asia. He turned down a lucrative offer to make a second journey to instead begin lecturing at St. Andrews. He earned his M.D. in 1769 and became a licentiate of the Edinburgh College of Physicians the following year. That year he also published his first work, Elements of Therapeutics. In 1776, he began teaching a course on chronic diseases, leading him to found a public dispensary that provided free medicine and medical advice to the poor (later the Royal Public Dispensary). Meanwhile, he also founded the Aesculapian Club and later the Harveian Club in 1782, both of which provided him with the necessary connections to begin publishing his journal of medicine, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries. In 1790, he served as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and two years later proposed the construction of a public mental asylum which was then built in 1807. The following year, he was decorated with the Freedom of Edinburgh for his work on the asylum as well as his dispensary. In 1821, he was made First Physician to the King in Scotland and was elected president of the Edinburgh Medical Chirurgical Society. He died a few years later and was buried in Buccleuch churchyard in Edinburgh. (DNB)