Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/411

 but in 1720 he was engaged in practice in Lanark, then a town of about two thousand inhabitants, as a surgeon and apothecary. On 5 May 1733 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He was a friend of John Gordon, Smollett's teacher, of Smollett himself, and of Dr. [q. v.], who then lived at Hamilton. He settled in London in 1739, where he was aided by Dr. Alexander Stuart, physician to St. George's Hospital, near whom he resided in Pall Mall (, Coll. of Phys. ii. 109), and attended the lectures of Dr. [q. v.] Before finally settling in practice he visited Paris, and attended lectures on midwifery there. On his return to London (1718–1783) [q. v.], who had been a pupil of Smellie's friend Cullen, in July 1741 went to live with him. He began to teach midwifery at his house in 1741, using a model made of real bones covered with leather. His fee for a single course was three guineas, and his teaching is described by a pupil as ‘distinct, mechanical, and unreserved.’ He received the degree of M.D. from the University of Glasgow on 18 Feb. 1745. Dr. William Douglas attacked his practice of midwifery in two letters published in 1748, to which a former pupil of Smellie replied anonymously in ‘An Answer to a late Pamphlet,’ and received an answer in ‘A Second Letter to Dr. Smellie.’ In 1752 Smellie published ‘A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery,’ and in 1754 a ‘Collection of Cases and Observations in Midwifery,’ and ‘A Set of Anatomical Tables with Explanations,’ in folio. In 1764 a supplementary volume to his treatise on midwifery was published, entitled ‘A Collection of Preternatural Cases and Observations in Midwifery.’ He describes more exactly than any previous writer the mechanism of parturition and the curves followed by the infant during birth, and he shows the importance of exact measurement of the pelvis. A letter from Smollett to Dr. (1729–1802) [q. v.], dated Chelsea, 1 March 1754, shows that he had revised the composition of Smellie's second volume, and probably of the others (Facsimile of letter in, Life of Smellie, p. 118). Both Dr. John Moore and Dr. Denman were his pupils. His practice was large, and in 1759 he retired to Lanark and bought a small property called Kingsmuir. This, with other land which he had bought before, formed an estate called Smellom, on which he built a house, and there died on 5 March 1763. He was buried near the church of St. Kentigern in Lanark, where his grave is marked by a tombstone and inscription.

In 1724 he married Eupham Borland, who survived him, and died on 27 June 1769 without offspring. Dr. Matthews Duncan, who was learned in all the midwifery writers, always spoke of Smellie as one of the greatest.



SMELLIE, WILLIAM (1740–1795), Scottish printer, naturalist, and antiquary, the second son of Alexander Smellie, an architect, was born in the Pleasance, Edinburgh, in 1740. He was educated first at a school in the village of Duddingstone, and afterwards at a grammar school in Edinburgh till 1752, when he was apprenticed (1 Oct.) to Messrs. Hamilton, Balfour, & Neil, printers in Edinburgh, for the term of six years and a half. So well did he acquit himself that two years before the expiration of his time he was appointed corrector of the press, with permission to attend classes in the university. In 1757 he won for his employers a silver medal offered by the Edinburgh Philosophical Society for the most accurate edition of a Latin classic, the volume being a 12mo edition of Terence (postdated 1758), which he had set up and corrected himself. His apprenticeship expired 1 April 1759, and on 22 Sept. following he became under agreement with Messrs. Murray & Cochrane, printers in Edinburgh, corrector in connection with the ‘Scots Magazine.’ There he was allowed three hours a day for his studies at the university. At one time he seems to have thought of preparing for the church.

In 1760 he was one of the founders of the Newtonian Society, which was started by young men desirous of mutual improvement, and in the same year he took up botany and employed his reading-boy, Pillans, to assist in collecting plants. He brought together a considerable herbarium. In 1765 he gained a gold medal for a ‘Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants,’ in which he opposed the teachings of Linnæus, and which evoked a reply from Dr. J. Rotheram. At one time he was selected by his professor, Dr. (1725–1786) [q. v.], to carry on the lectures during the latter's temporary absence.

On 25 March 1765, with the assistance of Dr. Hope and Dr. James Robertson, the professor of oriental languages, Smellie commenced business on his own account in partnership with his fellow apprentice 