Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/322

36 hood depended." After having been his most favourite pupil, John Brown became the most intimate of Dr Cullen's friends; but, three or four years afterwards, a quarrel took place between them, after which they ever regarded each other with feelings of the most determined hostility. By the friends of John Brown it is alleged, that Dr Cullen behaved towards him in a deceitful manner, for that he held out promises to interest himself in assisting him to obtain a professor's chair in the university; instead of which, when the opportunity presented itself, knowing that John Brown had adopted a theory of medicine different from his own, he tacitly opposed his election; and when the magistrates, or patrons of the university, asked him who John Brown was, so far from giving him his support, he, after some pretended hesitation, blasted his success, by observing, with a sarcastic smile, "Surely this can never be our Jock." Besides which, it is also affirmed, that when John Brown applied for admission into the society which published the Edinburgh essays, Dr Cullen, who had great influence there, contrived to get a majority to reject his petition. In reply to all this,—"and without attempting to vindicate either party, it must appear obvious, that John Brown's rejection by the patrons of the university as a professor must have been the necessary consequence of the dissipated character which he possessed; and it is more than probable that Dr Cullen himself, having sons now advancing in life, saw the necessity of discountenancing their intimacy with one whose habits of intemperance were likely to lead them into dissipation." John Brown soon became the founder and champion of a system of medicine opposed to that of Dr Cullen; and the palaestra where the opponents and advocates of both theories met, and where their disputations were carried on with the greatest vigour, was the hall of the medical society. The doctrines of Cullen had there, some years previously, triumphed over those of Boerhaave; but they in their turn were now destined to receive a shock from the zealous advocates of the new theory, which was warmly espoused by many, both at home and abroad.

Dr Cullen continued to deliver his lectures until within a few months of his death, when, feeling himself subdued by the infirmities of age, he was induced to resign his professorship; "but, for some years before his death," observes Dr James Anderson, "his friends perceived a sensible decline of that ardour and energy of mind which characterized him at a former period. Strangers, who had never seen him before, could not be sensible of this change; nor did any marked decline in him strike them, for his natural vivacity still was such as might pass in general as the unabated vigour of one in the prime of life." He resigned his professorship in the end of December, 1789. In the medical commentaries published at that period, his death is thus announced: "About the end of December, 1789, Dr William Cullen, after having taught medicine at Edinburgh for many years, with a degree of reputation which not only did honour to himself, but also to the university of which he was a member, being now arrived at his seventy-seventh (ninth) year, and finding himself unable, from age and infirmities, any longer to discharge the duties of his office, sent a letter to the patrons of the university of Edinburgh, resigning into their hands his professorship of the practice of physic."

Dr Cullen, on the occasion of his resignation, received many honourable testimonies of regard from the different public societies in Edinburgh.

The lord provost, magistrates, and town council presented him with an elegant piece of silver plate, with a suitable inscription, in acknowledgment of the services he had rendered to the university and to the community.