Sir James McGrigor, 1st Baronet

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Sir James McGrigor, 1st Baronet (1771-1858) was a Scottish physician and considered to be the man largely responsible for the creation of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

The son of a clothing merchant, he was educated in Aberdeen and received medical training at the University of Edinburgh. He joined the army as a surgeon in 1793 and saw service in Flanders, the West Indies and India. In 1811, he was appointed Surgeon-General for the Duke of Wellington's army in Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular Wars (1808-14). McGrigor returned to Britain before the Battle of Waterloo, and was knighted (1814). He went on to serve as Director-General of the Army Medical Service (1815-51) and did much to reform that department. He introduced the stethoscope in 1821, set up field hospitals for those injured in action, and generally improved the standards of cleanliness and hygiene. His autobiography was published in 1861. An obelisk to his memory has been placed in Aberdeen and is now in Duthie Park.^[1]

[edit] Further reading

Blanco, Richard L. Wellington's Surgeon General; Sir James McGrigor. Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1974, 8vo., pp. xiv.^[2]
McGrigor, Sir James (ed. Mary McGrigor). The Scalpel and the Sword: Sir James McGrigor: The Autobiography of the Father of Army Medicine edited by Mary McGrigor. Dalkeith Scottish Cultural Press, 2000. See by Martin Howard