Notice of some of the leading events in the life of the late Dr. John Thomson, formerly professor of surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, and of Military Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, and more recently professor of general pathology in the University.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of some of the leading events in the life of the late Dr. John Thomson, formerly professor of surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, and of Military Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, and more recently professor of general pathology in the University. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    &c. Dr Thomson was born at Paisley on the 15th of March 1765. His father, who was originally from Kinross, was a silk weaver, and for some time had been rather prosperous in the world, but by an imprudent confidence in a person with whom he was accustomed to have dealings in business, he became involved in debt. His pride not allowing him to extricate himself from his difficulties by declaring himself bankrupt, he borrowed money from a friend for this purpose. The necessity of regularly paying interest on the sum thus borrowed, until he was able to discharge it, obliged him to bring up his family with a rigorous attention to economy, and to put his children to work at an early age. After being engaged for about three years in the minor operations of silk-weaving under different masters, Dr Thomson was, at the age of eleven, bound to his father for a seven years' apprentice- ship, and not only served for the whole of this period, that is, to the age of eighteen, but continued to work with his father for nearly two years after his apprenticeship had expired. During the whole of the period he had been thus employed, Dr Thomson had sought for knowledge from every source from which he could obtain it;—the conversation carried on in thework- shops, the newspaper weekly read there, the books in his fa- ther's possession, which, however, related chiefly to doctrinal di- vinity, a circulating library, to which, at a time when a penny a week was his entire free income, that penny was devoted; and books probably borrowed from some of his associates, or, at a later period, purchased with his own earnings. His disinclination for a mechanical employment, and ardent desire for a profession that would admit of, or require, his devoting a larger portion of his time to the pursuit of knowledge, must have been known from an early period to his father, who, being a very warm adherent of the Antiburgher seceders, among whom his honourable character and
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