Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/69

 Little Children,’ after Eastlake, 1859. Watt died in London on 18 May 1867.



WATT, ROBERT (1774–1819), bibliographer, son of John Watt (d. 1810), was born at Bonnyton farm in the parish of Stewarton, Ayrshire, on 1 May 1774. At an early age he was sent to school, but when about thirteen worked as a ploughboy to a neighbouring farmer. A love of adventure gave him the desire to be a chapman. With some others he made a trip into Galloway to work on stone-dyking and road-making. At Dumfries they boarded on the farm of Ellisland, in the possession of Robert Burns, and lived for some days in the old house which he and his family had recently occupied. ‘During the summer I spent in Dumfriesshire I had frequent opportunities of seeing Burns, but cannot recollect of having formed any opinion of him, except a confused idea that he was an extraordinary character’ (Autobiographical Fragment in Biographical Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, 1856, p. 433). Even while carting stones he found opportunities for reading. His elder brother, John, who had been a cabinet-maker in Glasgow, returned home and persuaded Watt to join him in business as carpenter and joiner. His devotion to study became stronger, and young Watt in October or November 1792, having been prepared by an hour's tuition each morning in Greek and Latin by Duncan Macfarlane, schoolmaster in Stewarton, entered the classes for those languages at Glasgow University in 1793, and for the Greek and logic classes the following year. He gained a prize bestowed by Professor (d. 1820) [q. v.] for Greek, and in 1795 and 1796 attended the moral and natural philosophy classes at Edinburgh. During the summer recesses he supported himself by teaching, and in 1796 had a school in Kilmaurs parish, where he became acquainted with the Rev. [q. v.] of Kilmarnock—Burns's ‘Rumble John.’ In 1796 and 1797 he studied anatomy and divinity at Edinburgh, and obtained a prize of 10l. for an essay on ‘Regeneration,’ highly praised by Professor Hunter. He acted as parochial schoolmaster in Symington, near Kilmarnock, in 1797 and 1798, but resolved to give up the study of divinity for that of medicine, which he followed at Glasgow in 1798 and 1799. He was not, however, apprenticed to a surgeon, although Peter Mackenzie states that in 1793 Watt ‘got into the apothecary shop of old Moses Gardner’ in Glasgow (Reminiscences, vol. iii.).

Having secured the license of the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons on 6 April 1799, Watt commenced as a general practitioner at Paisley, contributed to the ‘Medical and Physical Journal’ (London, March and August 1800, and May 1801), and published his first book, ‘Cases of Diabetes, Consumption, &c., with Observations on the History and Treatment of Disease in general’ (Paisley, 1808, 8vo), a work long held in esteem. His practice and reputation increased, and he became a ‘member’ of the Glasgow faculty on 5 Jan. 1807. Two years later he journeyed south to see if he could find a suitable opening in England. He received the degree of M.D. from King's College, Aberdeen, on 20 March 1810, took a large house in Queen Street, Glasgow, practised as a physician, and delivered courses of lectures on medicine. His system of teaching was ‘to have recourse to original authors,’ and he established a well-chosen library, described in a ‘Catalogue of Medical Books for the use of Students attending Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine; with an Address to Medical Students on the best Method of prosecuting their Studies’ (Glasgow, 1812, 8vo), now extremely rare, and specially interesting as the starting point of the famous ‘Bibliotheca Britannica,’ the plan for which had been developing from the time he matriculated in 1793. The ‘Catalogue’ includes over a thousand entries; ancient and modern literature are well represented. He also had a collection of a thousand theses available for reference, and ‘manuscript catalogues, arranged alphabetically according to the authors' names and the subjects treated, may be seen in the library, and will be printed as soon as the collection is completed.’ He made some progress in the formation of a pathological museum.

In 1813 he published ‘A Treatise on the History, Nature, and Treatment of Chin-cough, including a Variety of Cases and Dissections; to which is subjoined an Inquiry into the relative Mortality of the principal Diseases of Children and the numbers who have died under ten years of age in Glasgow during the last thirty years,’ Glasgow, 8vo. The ‘Inquiry’ was the fruit of a laborious investigation of the registers of the Glasgow burial-places, and suggested that the diminution in deaths by smallpox due to vaccination was compensated by the increase in deaths by measles (cf., Life of Jenner, ii. 392; Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, April 1814, p. 177; Sir Gilbert Blane in Medical and Chirurgical Trans. of London, 1813, iv. 468; Dr. Farr in Registrar-