1826, stood in the liberal interest for the stewartry of Kirkcudbright against General Dunlop of Dunlop, and was successful by a majority of one. He vigorously supported all liberal measures, and advocated with eloquence and energy the cause of Poland. In 1834 he was made judge advocate-general, and on 16 July was sworn of the privy council. He went out of office and returned with Lord Melbourne. He was director of the East India Company 1830–5. Fergusson died at Paris 16 Nov. 1838, and was interred at the family vault, Craigdarrock. He married, 17 May 1832, a French lady, named Marie Joséphine Auger, who survived him with two children.
[Gent. Mag. January 1839, p. 94; Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 197; Foster's Collectanea Genealogica; Members of Parliament, Scotland, p. 135; State Trials, vols. xxvi. and xxvii.; Mrs. Riddell's letters in Kerr's Life of Smellie, vol. ii. (Edinburgh, 1811).]
FERGUSSON, WILLIAM, M.D. (1773–1846), inspector-general of military hospitals, was born at Ayr 19 June 1773, of a family of note in the borough. From the Ayr academy he went to attend the medical classes at Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D., afterwards attending the London hospitals. In 1794 he became assistant-surgeon in the army, and served in Holland, the West Indies, the Baltic, the Peninsula, and in the expedition against Guadeloupe in 1815. Having retired from the service in 1817, he settled in practice at Edinburgh, but removed four years after to Windsor on the invitation of the Duke of Gloucester, on whose staff he had been for twenty years. He acquired a lucrative practice both in the town and country around, which he carried on till 1843, when he was disabled by paralysis. He died in January 1846. His ‘Notes and Recollections of a Professional Life,’ a collection of his papers on various subjects, was brought out after his death by his son, James Fergusson (1808–1886) [q. v.] The papers are not all strictly medical, one considerable section of the book being on military tactics. There is a valuable essay on syphilis in Portugal, as affecting the British troops and the natives respectively (Med.-Chir. Trans., 1813); but the most important essay, for which Fergusson will be remembered, is that on the marsh poison, reprinted from the ‘Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,’ January 1820. He was probably the first to do justice, in a professional sense, to the now familiar fact that malarial fevers often occur on dry and barren soils, either sandy plains or rocky uplands, where rotting vegetation is out of the question, his own experience having been gained with the troops in Holland, Portugal, and the West Indies. This was an important step towards widening and rationalising the doctrine of malaria.
[Biographical preface by his son to Notes and Recollections.]
FERGUSSON, Sir WILLIAM (1808–1877), surgeon, son of James Fergusson of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, was born at Prestonpans on 20 March 1808, and was educated first at Lochmaben and afterwards at the high school and university of Edinburgh. At the age of fifteen he was placed by his own desire in a lawyer's office, but the work proved uncongenial, and at seventeen he exchanged law for medicine, in accordance with his father's original wishes. He became an assiduous pupil of Dr. Robert Knox the anatomist [q. v.], who was much pleased with a piece of mechanism which Fergusson constructed, and appointed him at the age of twenty demonstrator to his class of four hundred pupils. In 1828 Fergusson became a licentiate, and in 1829 a fellow of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons. He continued zealous in anatomy, often spending from twelve to sixteen hours a day in the dissecting-room. Two of his preparations, admirably dissected, are still preserved in the museum of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons. Soon after qualifying Fergusson began to deliver a portion of the lectures on general anatomy, in association with Knox, and to demonstrate surgical anatomy. In 1831 he was elected surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Dispensary, and in that year tied the subclavian artery, which had then been done in Scotland only twice. On 10 Oct. 1833 he married Miss Helen Hamilton Ranken, daughter and heiress of William Ranken of Spittlehaugh, Peeblesshire. This marriage placed him in easy circumstances, but he did not relax his efforts after success in operative surgery, and by 1836, when he was elected surgeon to the Royal Infirmary and fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he shared with Syme the best surgical practice in Scotland.
In 1840 Fergusson accepted the professorship of surgery at King's College, London, with the surgeoncy to King's College Hospital, and established himself at Dover Street, Piccadilly, whence he removed in 1847 to George Street, Hanover Square. He became M.R.C.S. Engl. in 1840, and fellow in 1844. His practice grew rapidly, and the fame of his operative skill brought many students and visitors to King's College Hospital. In
