Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/151

Rh which was contracted in the discharge of his hospital duties, gradually declined. After persevering in delivering his lectures until nearly the end of the session, he took to his bed in April 1832, and having endured a lingering illness, during which he displayed all that patience and moral courage which are characteristic of a highly -gifted mind, he died on the 13th of the following May, in the 58th year of his age. His funeral, according to his own directions, was intended to be strictly private ; but the members of numerous institutions, anxious to show their affection for his memory, met in the burial ground to attend the obsequies of their lamented friend.

Great energy and activity of mind, a universality of genius that made every subject, from the most abstruse to the most trivial, alike familiar to him, and a devoted love of science, which often led him to prefer its advancement to the establishment of his own fame, were his distinguishing traits. So well was he known and appreciated on the continent, that he received, unsolicited on his part, honorary degrees and other distinctions from the most famous universities; and few foreigners of distinction visited Edinburgh without bringing introductions to him. He had the honour of being in the habit of correspondence with many of the most distinguished persons in Europe, whether celebrated for high rank, or superior mental endowments. He had a great taste for the fine arts in general, and for music in particular ; and from his extensive knowledge of languages, was well versed in the literature of many nations. His manners were free from pedantry or affectation, and were remarkable for that unobtrusiveness which is often the peculiar characteristic of superior genius. He possessed a delicacy of feeling and a sense of honour and integrity amounting, in the estimation of many, to fastidiousness, but which were the elements of his moral character. He was indeed as much an ornament to private as to public life.

Among his contributions to medical science deserving especial notice may be enumerated his experiments on Peruvian bark, whereby he discovered cinchonin, and paved the way for the discovery of the vegetable alkaloids, which has so essentially contributed to the advancement of pharmaceutic science; his examination of the structure of the heart and the complicated course of its fibres; his paper on diffuse inflammation of the cellular tissue ; and more recently his Experiments on Medicine, communicated to the royal society of Edinburgh so late as December 1830. In addition to these, and besides the numerous essays written in his own journal, he contributed to the Edinburgh Review the articles on the Pharmacopoeia of the Royal College of Physicians on Vaccination and on Dr Thomson's System of Chemistry ; and to the Supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica those on Aqua Toffana, Digestion, and Food.

DUNCAN,, a learned writer, was born at Aberdeen, in July, 1717. He was the son of William Duncan, a tradesman in that city, and of Euphemia Kirkwood, the daughter of a farmer in Haddingtonshire. He received the rudiments of his education partly at the grammar school of Aberdeen, and partly at a boarding school at Foveran, kept by a Mr George Forbes. In 1733 Mr Duncan entered the Marischal college at Aberdeen, and applied himself particularly to the study of Greek, under Dr Blackwell. At the end of the usual course, he took the degree of M.A. His first design was to become a clergyman; but, after studying divinity for two years, he abandoned the intention, and, removing to London, became a writer for the press. The greater part of his literary career was of that obscure kind which rather supplies the wants of the day, than stores up fame for futurity. Translations from the French were among his mental exertions, and he was much beloved and respected by the other literary men of his day, especially those who were of the same nation with himself, such as George Lewis Scott and Dr Armstrong.