Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/80

216 enthusiasm. In all his undertakings he was strictly honourable, and deserved the confidence reposed in him by his employers."

RUTHERFORD,, a learned physician of the eighteenth century, was the son of the reverend Mr Rutherford, minister of the parish of Yarrow, in Selkirkshire, and was born, August 1, 1695. After going through a classical course at the school of Selkirk, and studying mathematics and natural philosophy at the Edinburgh university, he engaged himself as apprentice to a surgeon in that city, with whom he remained till 1716, when he went to London. He there attended the hospitals, and the lectures of Dr Douglas on anatomy, Andre on surgery, and Strother on materia medica. He afterwards studied at Leyden, under Boerhaave, and at Paris and Rheims; receiving from the university of the latter city his degree of M. D. in July, 1719.

Having, in 1721, settled as a physician in Edinburgh, Dr Rutherford was one of that fraternity of able and distinguished men, consisting, besides, of Monro, Sinclair, Plummer, and Innes, who established the medical school, which still nourishes in the Scottish capital. Monro had been lecturing on anatomy for a few years, when, in 1725, the other gentlemen above mentioned began to give lectures on the other departments of medical science. When the professorships were finally adjusted on the death of Dr Innes, the chair of the practice of medicine fell to the share of Dr Rutherford. He continued in that honourable station till the year 1765, delivering his lectures always in Latin, of which language it is said he had a greater command than of his own. About the year 1748, he began the system of clinical lectures; a most important improvement in the medical course of the university. After retiring, in 1765, from his professional duties, Dr Rutherford lived, highly respected by all the eminent physicians who had been his pupils, till 1779, when he died in the eighty-fourth year of his age. This venerable person, by his daughter Anne Rutherford, was the grandfather of that eminent ornament of modern literature, Sir Walter Scott.

RUTHERFORD,, a celebrated divine, was born about the year 1600, in the parish of Nisbet, (now annexed to Crailing,) in Roxburghshire, where his parents seem to have been engaged in agricultural pursuits. The locality and circumstances of his early education are unknown. He entered, in 1617, as a student at the university of Edinburgh, where he took his degree of master of arts in 1621. Nothing has been recorded of the rank he held, or the appearances he made as a student, but they must have been at least respectable; for at the end of two years, we find him elected one of the regents of the college. Ou this occasion, he had three competitors ; one of them of the same standing with himself, and two of them older. Of these, Mr Will, a master of the high school, according to Crawford, in his history of the university, " pleased the judges best, for his experience and actual knowledge; yet the whole regents, out of their particular knowledge of Mr Samuel Rutherford, demonstrated to them his eminent abilities of mind and virtuous dispositions, where- with the judges being satisfied, declared him successor in the profession of humanity." How he acted in this situation, we have not been told; nor did he continue long enough to make his qualifications generally apparent, being forced to demit his charge, as asserted by Crawford, on account of some scandal in his marriage, towards the end of the year 1625, only two years after he had entered upon it. What that scandal in his marriage was, has never been explained; but it is presumed to have been trifling, as it weighed so little in the estimation of the town council of Edinburgh, the patrons of the university, that they granted him "ane honest gratification at his demission;" and at a subsequent period, in conjunction with the presbytery, warmly solicited him