Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/771

NAME MACLEAN 749 MACLEANE Black in chemistry, going on to London and Paris for further medical study. In 1791 he received a diploma to practise surgery ana pharmacy from the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of the City of Glasgow and was admitted a member of the faculty the same day, in the twenty-first year of his age. While a student in Paris he was fortunate in study- ing with Lavoisier, BerthoUet and Fourcroy and his knowledge of the French language became almost as intimate as of English. It was here that he seemed to have imbibed views on the comparative merits of monarchical and republican forms of government that eventu- ally led him to emigrate to the United States. Maclean spent four years in his native city, practising surgery and then he sailed for New York in April, 1795. Before leaving Scotland he had adopted and had engraved upon his watch seal, a simple Scotch pebble, the motto : "Ubi libertas, ibi patria." From New York he went to Philadelphia bearing letters of introduction and was advised by Benjamin Rush to settle in Princeton, and there he practised with Dr. Ebenezer Stockton for two years. Having delivered a course of lectures on chemistry at the instance of the president of the college and having made a favorable impression, he was chosen professor of chem- istry and upon the decease of Dr. Walter Minto, the professor of mathematics and nat- ural philosophy, assumed his duties and began instruction in natural philosophy in November, 1796. From this time he gave himself wholly to the service of the college until his resig- nation in 1812. when he accepted .the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry in William and Mary College at Williamsburg. Virginia. After a brief service there his health failed and he returned to Princeton to die Februarv 17, 1814. Dr. Maclean's duties as lecturer at Prince- ton absorbed most of his time so that he wrote but little. In 1796 Dr. Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, at that time in America, published a pamphlet entitled : "Con- siderations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water." This Dr. Maclean reviewed in two supplementary lec- tures which were afterwards printed under the title, "Lectures on Combustion" and they were followed by articles in the New York Medical Repository continuing a discussion participated in by Priestley, Woodhouse and Mitchell and espousing the views of Lavoisier. In 1808 he was associated with Dr. Benjamin Silliman (q. v.) of Yale, in editing the first American edition of Henry's Chemistry. From one of Dr. Maclean's letters to his friend, Dr. Cleghorn of Glasgow, we find this reference to the "metallic tractors" of Dr. Elisha Perkins (q. v.) of Connecticut, two pointed pieces of metal about three inches long not unlike horseshoe nails that had a great vogue and were supposed to relieve pain when rubbed over an affected part : "I have been told by a gentleman from Maryland that it is common in that country to rub the blade of a knife over a rheumatic joint. From the Philo- sophical transactions it seems that much good has resulted from rubbing with the hand, and every Scotchman has been relieved by scratch- ing." The Rev. Samuel Miller said of Dr. Maclean : "As a physician, a surgeon, a nat- ural philosopher, a mathematician, and, above all, a chemist. Dr. Maclean was very eminent. As a college officer he was uncommonly popu- ■ lar and useful." Dr. Maclean was a corresponding member of the Academy of Medicine of Philadelphia and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1798 he married Phebe Bainbridge, eld- est daughter of Dr. Absalom Bainbridge of New York, and sister of Commodore William Bainbridge, U. S. N. Their son, John, became president of Princeton College. Memoir ot John Maclean, M.D., by his son, John Maclean, 64 pp. Princeton, 1876. Macleane, Laughlan (1728P-1777) Laughlan Macleane, son of John Macleane, a gentleman of small fortune in the north of Ireland, and born about the year 1728, was transferred, at the age of eighteen, from a school near Belfast, to Trinity College, Dublin. Here he became known to Burke and Goldsmith, and proceeding to Edinburgh to study physic, his name appears in the list of the Medical Society, January 4, 1754, a year after that of Goldsmith, by whom he was introduced. He afterwards visited Amer- ica — whether at first as a private practitioner, or medical officer in the army does not appear; probably, as was then not unusual, officiating in both capacities. He became identified with American medical history through a work on inoculation, pub- lished in Philadelphia in 1756. The title-page reads : "An Essay on the Expediency of Inoc- ulation, The Seasons most proper for it. Humbly Inscribed to The Inhabitants of Phila- delphia by Laughlan Macleane, M. D. . . . Philadelphia. . . . Printed by William Brad- ford at the Corner-House of Market and Front street, 1756." While the author's name appears here as "Laughlan Macleane," the offi-