the death of his colleague Plummer. Black had refused to compete against Cullen, and the latter, on his appointment, offered Black all his fees if he would assist him. Ten years later Black succeeded Cullen.
Cullen's first chemical course was attended by only seventeen students, the second by fifty-nine, and his class afterwards rose to 145. In 1757 he began to give clinical lectures in the infirmary, a practice in which Dr. Rutherford alone had preceded him. His careful preparation, his graphic descriptions of disease, and his candour, simplicity of thought, and comprehensiveness of view, soon made his clinical lectures renowned, especially as he delivered them in English instead of Latin. He taught his students to observe the course of nature in diseases, to distinguish between essential and accidental symptoms, and to carefully discriminate between the action of remedies and the curative operations of nature. He lectured largely on diseases of the most common types as being most useful to students. His prescriptions were markedly simple, and he experimentally used and introduced many new drugs of great value, such as cream of tartar, henbane, James's powder, and tartar emetic.
Charles Alston [q. v.], the professor of materia medica at Edinburgh, dying early in the session of 1760–1, his pupils, during the delay in the appointment of his successor, persuaded Cullen to deliver a course of lectures on materia medica, continuing also his chemistry course. These lectures being afterwards published without his authority in 1771, he obtained an injunction against the publisher, but afterwards permitted the edition to be sold with some corrections, on condition of receiving a share of the profits Cullen subsequently rewrote the book, and published it in two quarto volumes.
Cullen's great success as a clinical lecturer made him and his friends strongly desire and canvass for his appointment to the chair of the practice of physic on Dr. Rutherford's resignation in February 1766; but Rutherford's marked preference for Dr. John Gregory as his successor prevailed. Cullen was much disappointed, and when Whytt, the professor of the ‘Institutes’ or theory of physic (mainly a physiological chair), died two months afterwards, he was with difficulty persuaded to become a candidate. He was elected, however, on 1 Nov. 1766, and an arrangement was made in 1768 by which Gregory and Cullen lectured in alternate years on the theory and the practice of medicine. On Gregory's death in 1773 Cullen succeeded him, and thenceforth was the mainstay of the Edinburgh Medical School for many years. He was president of the Edinburgh College of Physicians from 1773 to 1775, and took an active part in preparing the new edition of the ‘Edinburgh Pharmacopœia’ issued in 1774, and in arranging for the building of a new hall for the college, begun in 1775. In the latter year he relinquished his teaching of clinical medicine at the infirmary. In 1776 he was elected foreign associate of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris, and in 1777 fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1783 Cullen's persevering exertions secured the incorporation of the Philosophical Society as the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His later years were clouded by the attacks of John Brown, founder of the Brunonian system (1735–1788) [q. v.], and his followers, and by the death of his wife; and his mental faculties were considerably dimmed before he resigned his professorship on 30 Dec. 1789. He died on 5 Feb. 1790, and was buried at Kirknewton, in which parish was situated his estate of Ormiston Hill.
Cullen was not remarkable as an anatomist or physiologist, nor was he specially an observer of medical facts. He was distinguished for his clearness of perception and sound reasoning and judgment rather than for epoch-making originality. Yet he had qualities which for many years made his name supreme among British teachers of medicine. As a lecturer he had great powers of interesting his students and inspiring them with enthusiasm. Dr. Anderson, one of his pupils, highly commends his excellent arrangement, his memory of facts, and the ease, vivacity, variety, and force of his lectures, which were delivered extemporaneously. To uncommon patience he joined great regard for truth. His was essentially a philosophic mind, not endowed with great imagination, but well read, and extremely capable of gathering together what was already known, and carrying it a stage further by his reflections. Dr. Aikin (General Biography, iii. 255), another pupil of Cullen's, says that his students were ardently attached to him because ‘he was cordially attentive to all their interests, admitted them freely to his house, conversed with them on the most familiar terms, solved their doubts and difficulties, gave them the use of his library, and in every respect treated them with the affection of a friend and the regard of a parent.’ He frequently gave poor students gratuitous admission to his lectures, and appears to have been the first to introduce at Edinburgh the practice of not charging fees for medical attendance on students of the university.
Cullen's principal works are the ‘Nosology’ and the ‘First Lines of the Practice of Physic.’
