He even essayed novels and dramas, but seems to have avoided verse. Besides writing in his own name he collaborated with others, and he appears also to have used pseudonyms. A man of great and varied ability and very wide attainments, he could always produce respectable and sometimes even excellent results. He died at his house at Kensington Gravel Pits on 16 Feb. 1817.
Thomson was twice married: first, to Diana Miltone, a Scotswoman. His second wife is described as the authoress of ‘The Labyrinth of Life’ and other novels of some merit. There were children by both marriages.
Of the numerous works written or edited by Thomson the chief are:
- ‘Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa,’ 1782.
- ‘The Man in the Moon,’ a satirical novel after the manner of Swift, 1783.
- ‘History of Great Britain from the Revolution of 1688 to the Accession of George I,’ 2 vols. 4to, 1787, from the Latin manuscript of Alexander Cunningham (1654–1737) [q. v.]
- ‘Memoirs of the War in Asia from 1780 to 1784,’ 2 vols. 1788.
- ‘Appeal to the People on behalf of Warren Hastings,’ 1788.
- ‘Mammuth, or Human Nature displayed on a grand scale, in a Tour with the Tinkers into the Central Parts of Africa,’ 1789.
- ‘A Tour in England and Scotland by an English Gentleman,’ 1789, enlarged into ‘Prospects and Observations on a Tour in England and Scotland, by Thomas Newte, Esq.,’ 1791.
- ‘Memoirs of Sergeant Donald Macleod,’ 1791.
- ‘Travels into Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,’ by Andrew Swinton, 1792.
- ‘Introduction to the Trial of Mr. Hastings,’ 1796.
- ‘Memoirs relative to Military Tactics,’ 1805.
- ‘Travels in Scotland by James Hall,’ illustrated, 1807.
Thomson also continued Goldsmith's ‘History of Greece;’ expanded in 1793 Buchanan's ‘Travels in the Hebrides;’ translated ‘Travels to the North Cape,’ from the Italian of Acerbi; compiled under the name of Harrison a commentary on the Bible; and edited ‘Narrative of an Expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam,’ by John Gabriel Stedman. A five-act tragedy, ‘Caledonia, or the Clans of Yore,’ appeared posthumously in 1818. Thomson prepared from 1790 to 1800 the historical part of Dodsley's ‘Annual Register.’ From 1794 to December 1796 he owned ‘The English Review,’ and largely furnished its contents. When he relinquished the ownership it was incorporated with the ‘Analytical Review’ [see Johnson, Joseph]. He also wrote for the ‘European Magazine,’ the ‘Political Herald,’ the ‘Oracle,’ and the ‘Whitehall Evening Post.’
[Annual Biogr. and Obit. 1818, pp. 74–117; Chambers's Biogr. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. II. ii. 772; Gent. Mag. 1817, i. 279, 647; information from Mr. J. Maitland Anderson, university librarian, St. Andrews.]
THOMSON, WILLIAM (1802–1852), physician, second son of John Thomson (1765–1846) [q. v.], by his first wife, and half-brother of Allen Thomson [q. v.], was born on 3 July 1802. He received his early education at the Edinburgh High School, and began his medical studies in 1818 at the university and in the extramural school at Edinburgh. He became a member of the Royal Medical Society in April 1819, and, after passing a winter session at the university of Glasgow in 1821–2, he accompanied (Sir) Robert Carswell to Paris and Lyons to assist in observing and dissecting those cases of disease with which Carswell illustrated the lectures of Thomson's father. He again went abroad in 1825, and afterwards settled in Edinburgh to teach and to practise. He became a fellow of the College of Surgeons in 1825, and was shortly afterwards elected a surgeon to the New Town dispensary. He gave a course of lectures upon the institutes of medicine or physiology in 1826–1827, and repeated it in the two following years. He was then associated with his father as lecturer on the practice of physic, and in 1830 he assumed the whole duties of the course. When his father's health failed, he delivered several entire courses of lectures on general pathology, and, after applying unsuccessfully for the chair on his father's retirement, he was appointed in 1841 professor of the practice of physic in the university of Glasgow. He was admitted a doctor of medicine from the Marischal College by the university of Aberdeen in 1831; in 1833 he joined the College of Physicians of Edinburgh as a fellow, and in 1840 he was appointed, and acted for a year as, one of the physicians to the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh.
During the eleven years he spent in Glasgow, Thomson devoted himself to the extension and improvement of his lectures on the practice of physic. He also gave much time to the management of the internal affairs of the college or teaching body of the university. He acted for six or seven years as clerk of the faculty or secretary to the college. In virtue of his office of professor of medicine to the university, he was a permanent director of the Royal Infirmary, and also of the large asylum for lunatics at Gartnavel, near Glasgow, and during the winter of 1848–9, when the
