Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/348

 of 1776, having obtained leave from the convention, he sailed for Greenock, intending to graduate at Edinburgh and return to practise in America. After three days an armed vessel seized the ship in the name of the revolted colony, and, confiscating their goods, turned Currie and his fellow-passengers to wander on the shore. He returned to Cabin Point, and was twice drafted to serve in the colonial army, only escaping by a heavy payment. He again obtained a passage, his vessel was again seized, and he had to make a journey of a hundred and fifty miles in an open boat to appeal against the seizure. Fever and dysentery, a hurricane, and an accident were added to his misfortunes, but at last the vessel got away after six weeks and reached St. Eustachius. On the voyage he read the Bible, Swift, Addison, and Pope, and the tragedy of ‘Douglas,’ and wrote literary exercises. He endeavoured to repair his fortunes by purchasing goods for the English admiral on the West Indian station. But the admiral took advantage of a fall in the market and declined to pay for the goods he had ordered. Disappointed, almost ruined, and exhausted, Currie had another fever, which was followed by paralysis. He recovered, went on to Antigua, and after a time sailed for England. Many storms delayed the vessel, and she was twice nearly wrecked, but at last reached Deptford on 2 May 1777.

In the autumn of the same year he went to Edinburgh University and began the study of medicine. He had little to live on, but worked hard, and was soon well known to the professors and remarkable at the students' societies. On 1 Sept. 1778, after a day's walk of thirty-two miles with a fellow-student, during which they had bathed twice, he bathed a third time, after sundown, in the Tweed (Medical Reports, 1797, p. 110). The water felt cold, and no reaction followed; he soon had a rheumatic fever, in which probably began the affection of the heart which afterwards interrupted his work and finally contributed to his death. Though he worked hard at medicine he did not neglect other studies, and read much metaphysics and wrote a review of Reid's work on the active powers of man (Analytical Review, 1 Nov. 1778). An appointment in the West Indies seeming within his reach if he had a degree, he went to Glasgow, where it could be obtained earlier, and there graduated in April 1780. Soon after he went to London, and when the hoped-for appointment was given to another, he took his passage for the West Indies, hoping for some other employment. The vessel was delayed; he was detained in London, saw something of men of letters there, and seems to have received encouragement from Burke. He began to wish to stay in England, and at last, having learnt that a physician was wanted in Liverpool, settled there in October 1780. The evils of climate, civil war, storms at sea, illness, and want of means which had hitherto crossed his course had made him neither morose nor sordid. He wrote to his aunt (12 Dec. 1780): ‘I would fondly believe, that if to propose no selfish views as the ends of my ambition entitle, in any degree, to the smiles of heaven, there is a claim which I may prefer.’ It was the lofty spirit indicated in this sentence and his freedom from any but high-minded aims that made Currie respected and prominent in Liverpool. He was elected physician to the dispensary, and soon after, with Roscoe, Rathbone, Professor Smyth, and others, established a literary society, of which he became president. At the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester he published in 1781 a paper on hypochondriasis. In January 1783 he married the daughter of Mr. William Wallace, an Irish merchant in Liverpool. In the next year he had pleurisy, with blood-spitting, and went for his health to Bristol. He consulted Dr. Darwin, who has published his case in the ‘Zoonomia’ (ii. 293). A long tour on horseback restored his health, and he returned to work at Liverpool, where in 1787 he became a warm advocate of the abolition of the slave trade, and joined Rathbone, Yates, and Roscoe in opposing the trade feeling of Liverpool for slavery. In 1790 he wrote, conjointly with Roscoe, a series of twenty essays called ‘The Recluse’ (Liverpool Weekly Herald, 1790). In 1792 he was elected F.R.S., and now, after twelve years of practice in Liverpool, was rich enough to buy a small estate in his native district. He published in June 1793 a letter to Mr. Pitt, under the signature of Jaspar Wilson, which went through several editions. Its object was to persuade the prime minister not to declare war with France, and the opinions expressed are somewhat nearer those of Dr. Price than of Burke, but are for the most part such as only the excited feeling of the times could have made readable. Vansittart (Lord Bexley) wrote a reply, and when it became known that Currie was Jaspar Wilson his practice suffered a little. He thenceforward avoided politics, but in 1797 published at Liverpool the medical work by which he is remembered, ‘Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, cold and warm, as a Remedy in Fever and Febrile Diseases, whether applied to the Surface of the Body or used as a Drink, with Observations on