[Histories of India by Mill (Wilson's edition) and Thornton; Grant Duff's History of the Mahrattas; Gleig's Life and Letters of Warren Hastings; Ross's Cornwallis Correspondence; Documents explanatory of the Case of Sir John Macpherson (published by his friends in 1800); English Parliamentary Reports; Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, iv. 233–8, in Wheatley's edition, 1884.]
MACPHERSON, JOHN, M.D. (1817–1890), physician, younger brother of Samuel Charters Macpherson [q. v.], and son of Hugh Macpherson, professor of Greek in the university of Aberdeen, was born at Old Aberdeen in 1817, and after education at the grammar school, entered the university, and graduated M.A., and was created an honorary M.D. He studied medicine at St. George's Hospital in London, and at a school in Kinnerton Street, from 1835 to 1838. He then went abroad, to Bonn, Vienna, and Berlin, for a year. In October 1839 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. While and in India he published 'Statistics of Dysentery,' 1850; 'Insanity among Europeans' 1853 'Report on Native Lunatic Asylums,' 1855; ‘On Antiperiodics,' 1856; and on his return ‘Cholera in its Home,' 1866; ‘Our Baths and Wells of Europe,’ 1871; ‘Annals of Cholera up to 1817,' 1884; and a privately printed 'Essay on Celtic Names.’ He believed that no drug had any effect upon cholera, and he differed from many writers in holding that cholera was observed in India as early as 1503. He travelled much in the British islands and on the continent, making the observations recorded in his books on ‘Baths and Wells.’ His last Journey was in 1859 to the south of Spain. fie knew French and German well, but not Gaelic, although he was much interested in Celtic studies. His kindly disposition was manifest in his face, his conversation was learned, and, like his manners, simple and unaffected. He lived in London, in Curzon Street, and there died after a long illness, 17 March 1890.
[Obituary notice in Lancet 29 March 1890; British Medical Journal, 29 March 1896; Works; personal knowledge]
MACPHERSON, PAUL (1756–1846), Scottish abbé, was born of catholic parents at Scanlan on 4 March 1756, and was admittsd a student in the seminary there in June 1767, spent two years (1770-2) at the Scots College in Rome, and completed his theological course at the Scots College at Valladolid in Spain. Having been ordained priest by the Bishop of Segovia, he returned to the mission, and was stationed successively at Shenval in the Cabrach, at Aberdeen, and at Stobhall. In 1791 he removed to Edinburgh on being appointed procurator of the mission. He was sent to Rome in 1793 as agent of the Scottish clergy, and for many years he transacted with the holy see all the ecclesiastical business of the mission. In 1798 General Berthier, by order of the French Directory, took possession of Rome, whereupon Macpherson left the city and travelled through France and England. When the British cabinet was considering the practicability of rescuing Pius VI, then a French prisoner at Savona, on the Genoese coast, on English frigate was ordered to cruise off the land, and Macpherson was despatched from London with ample powers and funds to effect the escape of the pontiff. Spies of the Directory disclosed the design to the Paris government, and the attempt failed. Macpherson was imprisoned, and on his liberation sought refuge in Scotland, where he took charge of the congregation at Huntly. He went back to Rome in 1800, but again visited Scotland in 1811, after the seizure and exile of Pius VII. On the restoration of that pontiff he returned to Rome once more. Besides being agent for the Scottish vicars-appostolic, he was for some years employed in the same capacity by those of England and she by some of the Irish bishops. The Scots College had been for sometime under the control of Italian ecclesiastics, but Macpherson induced the pope to place the institution under native management, and he was himself appointed its first Scottish rector. The first students arrived in Scotland in 1820.
He was mainly instrumental in securing the most valuable of the Stuart for the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV (Quarterly Review, 1846). It was also owing to his care and foresight that many of the manuscripts of the Scots College in Paris were preserved and brought back to Scotland.
Macpherson resigned the rectorship of the Scots College in 1826 and returning to Scotland in May 1827, he erected a chapel in Glenlivet. 1n 1834, however, he ones more went to Rome and resumed the office of rector of the Scots College. There he died on 24 Nov. 1845.
