DR ROBERT, an eminent physician, born at Edinburgh on the 6th September 1714, was the son of Robert Whytt, Esq. of Bennochy, advocate. This gentleman died fix months before the birth of our author, who had also the misfortune to be deprived of his mother before he had attained the seventh year of his age. After receiving the first rudiments of school-education, he was sent to the university of St Andrew's; and after the usual course of instruction there, in classical, philosophical, and mathematical learning, he came to Edinburgh, where he entered upon the study of medicine, under those eminent medical teachers, Monro, Rutherford, Sinclair, Plummer, Alston, and Innes. After learning what was to be acquired at this university, in the prosecution of his studies he visited foreign countries; and after attending the most eminent teachers at London, Paris, and Leyden, he had the degree of Doctor of Physic conferred upon him by the university of Rheims in 1736, being then in the 22d year of his age.
Upon his return to his native country, he had the same honour also conferred upon him by the university of St Andrew's; where he had before obtained, with applause, the degree of Master of Arts.
Not long afterwards, in the year 1737, he was admitted a Licentiate of Medicine by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; and the year following he was raised to the rank of a Fellow of the College. From the time of his admission as a licentiate, he entered upon the practice of physic at Edinburgh; and the reputation which he acquired for medical learning, pointed him out as a fit successor for the first vacant chair in the university. Accordingly, when Dr Sinclair, whose eminent medical abilities, and persuasive powers of oratory, had contributed not a little to the rapid advancement of the medical school of Edinburgh, found that those conspicuous talents which he possessed could no longer be exerted in the manner which they once had been, when he enjoyed bodily vigour unimpaired by age and powers of mind unclouded by disease, he resigned his academical appointments in favour of Dr Whytt.
This admission into the college took place on the 20th of June 1746; and he began his first course of the institutions of medicine at the commencement of the next winter-session. The abilities which he displayed from his academical chair, in no particular disappointed the expectations which had been formed of his lectures. The Latin tongue was the language of the university of Edinburgh; and he both spoke and wrote in Latin with singular propriety, elegance, and perspicuity. At that time the system and sentiments of Dr Boerhaave, which, notwithstanding their errors, must challenge the admiration of latest ages, were very generally received by the most intelligent physicians in Britain. Dr Whytt had no such idle ardour for novelties as to throw them entirely aside because he could not follow them in every particular. The institutions of Dr Boerhaave, therefore, furnished him with a text for his lectures; and he was no less successful in explaining, illustrating, and establishing the sentiments of the author, when he could freely adopt them, than in refuting them by clear, connected, and decisive arguments, when he had occasion to differ from him. The opinions which he himself propounded, were delivered and enforced with such acuteness of invention, such display of facts and force of argument, as could rarely fail to gain universal assent from his numerous auditors; but free from that self-sufficiency which is ever the offspring of ignorance and conceit, he delivered his conclusions with becoming modesty and diffidence.
From the time that he first entered upon an academical appointment, till the year 1756, his prelections were confined to the institutions of medicine alone. But at that period his learned colleague Dr Rutherford, who then filled the practical chair, who had already taught medicine at Edinburgh with universal applause for more than thirty years, and who had been the first to begin the institution of clinical lectures at the Royal Infirmary, found it necessary to retire from the fatiguing duties of an office to which the progress of age rendered him unequal. On this crisis Dr Whytt, Dr Monro, fen. and Dr Cullen, each agreed to take a share in an appointment in which their united exertions promised the highest advantages to the university. By this arrangement students, who had an opportunity of daily witnessing the practice of three such teachers, and of hearing the grounds of that practice explained, could not fail to derive the most solid advantages.
In these two departments, the institutions of medicine in the university, and the clinical lectures in the Royal Infirmary, Dr Whytt's academical labours were attended with the most beneficial consequences both to the students and to the university. But not long after the period we have last mentioned, his lectures on the former of these subjects underwent a considerable change. About this time the illustrious Gaubius, who had succeeded to the chair of Boerhaave, favoured the world with his Institutiones Pathologiae. This branch of medicine had indeed a place in the text which Dr Whytt formerly followed; but, without detracting from the character of Dr Boerhaave, it may justly be said, that the attention he had bestowed upon it was not equal to its importance. Dr Whytt was sensible of the improved state in which pathology now appeared in the writings of Boerhaave's successor; and he made no delay in availing himself of the advantages which were then afforded.
In the year 1762, his pathological lectures were entirely new-modelled. Following the publication of Gaubius as a text, he delivered a comment, which was read by every intelligent student with the most unfeigned satisfaction. In these lectures he collected and condensed the fruits of accurate observation and long experience. Enriched by all the opportunities of information which he had enjoyed, and by all the discernment which he was capable of exerting, they were justly considered as his most finished production.
For a period of more than twenty years, during which he was justly held in the highest esteem as a lecturer at Edinburgh, it may readily be supposed that the extent of his practice corresponded to his reputation. In fact, he received both the first emoluments, and the highest honours, which could here be obtained. With extensive practice in Edinburgh, he had numerous consultations from other places. His opinion on medical subjects was daily requested by his most eminent contemporaries in every part of Britain. Foreigners of the first distinction, and celebrated physicians in the most remote parts of the British empire, courted an intercourse with him by letter. Besides private testimonies of esteem, many public marks of honour were conferred upon him both at home and abroad. In 1752, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London; in 1761, he was appointed first physician to the king of Scotland; and in 1764, he was chosen president of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh.
But the fame which Dr Whytt acquired as a practitioner and teacher of medicine, were not a little increased by the information which he communicated to the medical world in different publications. His celebrity as an author was still more extensive than his reputation as a professor.
His first publication, An Essay on the Vital and other Involuntary Motions of Animals, although it had been begun soon after he had finished his academical course of medical education, did not come from the press till 1751; a period of fifteen years from the time that he had finished his academical course, and obtained a degree in medicine; but the delay of this publication was fully compensated by the matter which it contained, and the improved form under which it appeared.
The next subject which employed the pen of Dr Whytt was one of a nature more immediately practical. His Essay on the Virtues of Lime-water and Soap in the Cure of the Stone, first made its appearance in a separate volume in 1752. Part of this second work had appeared several years before in the Edinburgh Medical Essays; but it was now presented to the world as a distinct publication with many improvements and additions.
His third work, intitled Physiological Essays, was first published in the year 1755. This treatise consisted of two parts; 1st, An Inquiry into the Causes which promote the Circulation of the Fluids in the very small Vessels of Animals; and 2dly, Observations on the Sensibility and Irritability of the Parts of Men and other Animals, occasioned by Dr Haller's treatise on that subject. The former of these may be considered as an extension and farther illustration of the sentiments which he had already delivered in his Essay on the Vital Motions, while the latter was on a subject of a controversial nature. In both he displayed that acuteness of genius and strength of judgment which appeared in his former writings.
From the time at which his Physiological Essays were published, several years were probably employed by our author in preparing for the press a larger and perhaps a more important work than any yet mentioned, his Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which are commonly called nervous, hypochondriac, and hysterick. This elaborate and useful work was published in the year 1764.
The last of Dr Whytt's writings is intitled, Observations on the Dropsy in the Brain. This treatise did not appear till two years after his death; when all his other works were collected and published in one quarto volume, under the direction of his son and of his intimate friend the late Sir John Pringle.
Besides these five works, he wrote many other papers, which appeared in different periodical publications; particularly in the Philosophical Transactions, the Medical Essays, the Medical Observations, and the Physical and Literary Essays.
At an early period of life, soon after he had settled as a medical practitioner in Edinburgh, he entered into the married state. His first wife was Miss Robertson, sister to General Robertson, governor of New York. By her he had two children; both of whom died in early infancy, and their mother did not long survive them. A few years after the death of his first wife, he married as a second wife Miss Balfour, sister to James Balfour, Esq. of Pilrig. By her he had fourteen children; but in these also he was in some respects unfortunate; for six of them only survived him, three sons and three daughters, and of the former two are since dead. Although the feeling heart of Dr Whytt, amidst the distresses of his family, must have often suffered that uneasiness and anxiety which in such circumstances is the unavoidable consequence of parental affection and conjugal love; yet he enjoyed a large share of matrimonial felicity. But his course of happiness was terminated by the death of his wife, which happened in the year 1764: and it is not improbable that this event had some share in hastening his own death; for in the beginning of the year 1765 his health was so far impaired, that he became incapable of his former exertions. A tedious complication of chronical ailments, which chiefly appeared under the form of diabetes, was not to be resisted by all the medical skill which Edinburgh could afford; and at length terminated in death, on the 15th of April 1766, in the 52d year of his age.