Douglas Argyll Robertson

Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson FRSE, FRCSEd LLD (1837 – 3 January 1909) was a Scottish ophthalmologist and surgeon. He introduced physostigmine into ophthalmic practice and the Argyll Robertson pupil is named after him. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Early life

He was born at 58 Queen Street in Edinburgh in 1837, the son of Dr John Argyll Robertson, a surgeon with an interest in surgery of the eye who had served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1846. His older brother, C. Lockhart Robertson was an eminent psychiatrist and Lord Chancellor's medical visitor.

Argyll Robertson was educated at the Edinburgh Institution and at Neuwied in Germany going on to study medicine at the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews.

Career

After graduating MD in 1857 from the University of St Andrews, he was appointed house surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh before going to Prague to study ophthalmology under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt (1812-1887) and then to Berlin to study under Albrecht von Graefe (1828–1870). On return to Edinburgh he became assistant to Professor John Hughes Bennett, Professor of the Institutes of Medicine (physiology) at Edinburgh University. He then joined the Eye Dispensary which his father had helped to found, and qualified as Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1862. He then began to lecture on diseases of the eye in the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine at Surgeons' Hall. In 1867 he became assistant ophthalmic surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary under William Walker, and became senior surgeon in 1870 until he retired in 1897. He was lecturer on Diseases of the Eye in the University of Edinburgh.