William Fergusson

Dr William Fergusson FRSE (1773–1846) was a Scottish inspector-general of military hospitals, and medical writer.

Life

He was born in Ayr 19 June 1773 into a prominent local family. From Ayr Academy he went to attend the medical classes at Edinburgh University, where he graduated MB, afterwards attending the London hospitals. In 1794 he became assistant-surgeon in the army, and served in Holland, the West Indies, the Baltic, the Iberian Peninsula, and in the expedition against Guadeloupe in 1815.

Fergusson is widely quoted (though often misspelt) as a source of accounts of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, where he was present (as Staff-Surgeon of the troops embarked) with Admiral Lord Nelson on the flagship Elephant, before being entrusted with the conveyance of the British wounded to Yarmouth.

He received his doctorate (MD) from St Andrews University in 1812.

Having retired from military service in 1817, he settled in practice at Edinburgh, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1818. His proposers were Thomas Charles Hope, Sir David Brewster and James Russell. In 1819 he was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.

In 1821 he moved to Windsor on the invitation of the Duke of Gloucester, on whose staff he had been for twenty years. He acquired a lucrative practice both in the town and country around, which he carried on till 1843, when he was disabled by paralysis.

He died on 19 January 1846 and is buried with his son, James Fergusson (1808–1886), on the west side of Highgate Cemetery.