FORDYCE, George, a writer and lecturer on medicine, was born at Aberdeen in 1736, and studied at the university of that city, where he took the degree of master of arts at the early age of fourteen, perhaps not altogether owing to the superiority of his genius, or the extent of his acquirements, which could not be very extraordinary in a boy of his years. He became apprentice to an uncle who practised surgery at Uppingham in Rutlandshire, when he was only fifteen; and afterwards went to the university of Edinburgh, where his diligence and progress attracted the attention of Dr Cullen, at that time professor of chemistry, who very generously promoted his improvement. He graduated in 1758, when only twenty-two years of age; after which he resided during one winter at Leyden. The greater part of his patrimony having been spent on his education, he resolved to try his fortune in London, where he settled in the year 1759. He commenced with a course of lectures on chemistry; and although his encouragement at first was by no means flattering, yet he steadily and diligently persevered, notwithstanding unfavourable appearances, till his literary merit began gradually to be discovered and appreciated. A number of young men who came to study in London did not think that their medical course was complete without availing themselves of the benefit of his course of lectures. In the year 1768 he published his Elements of the Practice of Physic, which formed the textbook of his medical course, and were much read as a valuable epitome of medicine. His private practice was very respectable; and in the year 1770 his medical reputation was so great that he was chosen physician to the hospital of St Thomas, although he had to contend against a gentleman with very powerful interest; whilst his merit as a man of science procured him admission as a member of the Royal Society in 1776. In 1787 he was chosen a fellow of the College of Physicians; and his chemical knowledge was of much importance to that body in preparing a new edition of their Pharmacopoeia. By the influence of his connections, but probably more so by his literary reputation, he was appointed to furnish the navy with sour krout, which he believed he executed with advantage both to himself and to the public. By this time, however, his constitution had discovered symptoms of premature decay; yet he continued to discharge his professional duties till he fell a
victim to an irregular gout, and water in the chest, on the Forecastle 25th of June 1802, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. If his lectures wanted the charms of an eloquent delivery, he made amends by the originality of his ideas and the extent of his scientific information. His works are, 1. Elements of Agriculture and Vegetation; 2. Elements of the Practice of Physick; 3. A Treatise on the Digestion of Food; 4. Four Dissertations on Fever, to which has been added a fifth, published from his manuscript since his death. His other works appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, to which he contributed eight papers, and on the Medical and Chirurgical Transactions, to which he contributed three.