Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/102

DOUGLAS, James, M. D., a skilful anatomist and surgeon, and accomplished physician, was born in Scotland in the year 1675. Having completed his preliminary education, he proceeded to London, and there applied himself diligently to the studies of anatomy and surgery. Medical science was at that period but little advanced, nor were the facilities of acquiring a proficiency in any branch of it, by any means considerable. Dr Douglas laboured with assiduity to overcome the difficulties against which he had to contend; he studied carefully the works of the ancients, which were at that time little known to his Contemporaries, and sought to supply what in them appeared defective, by closely studying nature. The toils of patient industry seldom go unrewarded; and he was soon enabled so far to advance the progress of anatomy and surgery, as to entitle himself to a conspicuous place in the history of medicine. His "Descriptio Comparativa Musculorum Carports Humani et Quadrupedis" was published in London in 1707. The quadruped he chose for his analogy was the dog ; and he thus appears to have proceeded in imitation of Galen, who left on record an account of the muscles of the ape and in man. "As for the comparative part of this treatise, or the interlacing the descriptions of the human muscles with those of the canine, that " says Dr Douglas, " needs no apology. The many useful discoveries known from the dissection of quadrupeds, the knowledge of the true structure of divers parts of the body, of the course of the blood and the chyle, and of the use and proper action of the parts, that are chiefly owing to this sort of dissection; these, I say, give a very warrantable plea for insisting upon it, though it may be censured by the vulgar." His descriptions of the muscles, their origin and insertion, and their various uses, are extremely accurate ; and to them many recent authors on myology, of no mean authority, have been not a little indebted. It soon obtained considerable notice on the continent, where, in 1738, an edition appeared in Latin, by John Frederic Schreiber. His anatomical chef d'œuvre, however, was the description he gave of the peritonæum, the complicated course and reflections of which, he pointed out with admirable accuracy. His account entitled "a description of the Peritonæum, and of that part of the Membrana Cellularis which lies on its outside," appeared in London in the year 1730. Nicholas Massa, and others of the older anatomists, had contended that the peritonaeum was a uniform and continuous membrane, but it remained for Dr Douglas to demonstrate the fact; in which, after repeated dissections, he satisfactorily succeeded Ocular inspection can alone teach the folds and processes of this membrane;—but his description is perhaps the best and most complete that can even yet be consulted. Besides his researches in anatomy, Dr Douglas laboured to advance the then rude state of surgery. He studied particularly the difficult and painful operation of lithotomy, and introduced to the notice of the profession the methods recommended by Jacques, Rau, and Mery. In the year 172C, he published "a History of the lateral operation for Stone," which was republished with an appendix, in 1733, and embraced a comparison of the methods used by different lithotomists, more especially of that which was practised by Cheselden. Dr Douglas taught for many years both anatomy and surgery; and his fame having extended, he was appointed physician to the king, who afterwards awarded him a pension of five hundred guineas per annum. It may be worth noticing, that while practising in London, he seems to have obtained considerable credit for having detected the imposition of a woman named Maria Tofts, who had for some time imposed successfully on the public. This impostor pretended, that from time to time she underwent an accouchement, during which, she gave birth—not to any human being but to rabbits;—and this strange deception she practised successfully on many well educated persons. Dr Douglas detected the