an ancient seaport, parliamentary burgh, and parish of Banffshire. It stands on an eminence overlooking the sea, and is about 13 miles west from Banff. The present town is of comparatively modern date, the only remains of the ancient burgh being a cluster of mean houses called the Fish Town, near the shore. It contains two churches belonging to the Establishment, and a Free church. Most of the inhabitants are engaged in agricultural pursuits, distilling, &c., and about a third in the fisheries. The harbour is good, and there are a few vessels belonging to the port. The exports are chiefly fish and agricultural produce; the imports are merely for local consumption. The burgh, which was first chartered by Robert Bruce, is governed by a provost and nineteen councilors. It unites with Banff, Peterhead, Inveruray, and Kinloch, in returning one member to parliament. Pop. of parliamentary burgh 1697; of royal burgh 3165.

Dr William, an eminent physician and medical teacher, was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, on the 11th of December 1712. His parents were respectable but not rich, and his father was for some time chief magistrate of the town of Hamilton. Not being able to spare a sufficient sum of money to educate his son at the university, he bound him as an apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary in Glasgow. On the completion of his apprenticeship young Cullen became surgeon to a merchant vessel which traded between London and the West Indies. After making several voyages, he settled as a country practitioner in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire, where, in a way creditable to himself, he became acquainted with the Duke of Argyll, who at that time bore the chief political sway in Scotland. Cullen at this time seems to have devoted much of his spare time to chemistry; and the Duke of Argyll, who was at a friend's house in the neighbourhood, and was fond of chemistry, being in want of some apparatus which he could not otherwise procure, was introduced to Cullen, who gained his good opinion, and was not forgotten by the duke when it was in his power to serve him. Shortly afterwards Cullen removed to Hamilton, where he was admitted as a town-councillor in 1737, and served as chief magistrate in the years 1739 and 1740.

While at Hamilton he entered into partnership with the celebrated Dr William Hunter, then a young man. The chief object of the connection was to enable each to pursue and improve his medical education; and they accordingly agreed that they should alternately study during the winter session at some medical school, while the other should carry on the business for the common behoof. Cullen's turn came first, and he passed the winter at the Edinburgh University. Hunter, on the other hand, when his turn came, chose London, where his assiduity and talents recommended him to the notice of Dr Douglas, lecturer on anatomy and midwifery, who appointed him his assistant. Cullen, unwilling to throw any obstacle in the way of his friend's advancement, agreed to cancel the articles of partnership; and he maintained ever after a cordial correspondence with his friend.

While at Hamilton, Cullen married Miss Johnston, the daughter of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, a beautiful and accomplished lady of about his own age, who brought him some money, a matter of no small importance to him at that period; bore him a large family, and, after a long and happy life, died in the summer of 1786, four years before the death of Cullen himself.

While practising at Hamilton, he was called in to prescribe for the Duke of Hamilton, who had been suddenly taken ill; and so much pleased was the duke with young Cullen's ability, attention, and conversation, that from that date he became his patron and friend.

Cullen graduated at the University of Glasgow in Sept. 1746. In the same year, through the influence of the Duke of Hamilton, he was appointed lecturer on chemistry in that university, and he delivered his first of a course of lectures on that science in October. It was here he began to exhibit that rare and precious talent of giving science an attractive form, diffusing clearness over abstruse subjects, generalizing facts, and making the most difficult points intelligible to ordinary capacities. His lectures became exceedingly attractive and popular, while, at the same time, his character and practice as a physician daily increased.

In 1751, a vacancy having occurred in the professorship of medicine, Dr Cullen, through the influence of the Duke of Argyll, was appointed by the king to the vacant chair. Here he so much further increased his reputation, that in 1756, on the death of Dr Plummer, professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, the patrons (the magistrates and town-council) unanimously offered the chair to Dr Cullen. He accordingly resigned his appointments in Glasgow in March 1756, and in the month of October of that year commenced his duties in the University of Edinburgh. At the same time he delivered clinical lectures in the Royal Infirmary, which he continued to do till near the close of his career. If Dr Cullen's popularity was great in Glasgow, it increased in Edinburgh; so that when Dr Alison, professor of materia medica, died in February 1763, and Dr Cullen was requested by the patrons to finish the course of lectures which had been begun for that session, his popularity was such that the class increased from ten to upwards of one hundred students. He did not read his predecessor's lectures, but gave an entirely new course; and the arrangement and whole treatment of the subject was so lucid and novel, and the generalizations so free and yet so striking, that the publication of an imperfect copy of these lectures, hastily prepared, possibly from students' notes, was hailed with pleasure by the whole medical profession. This publication, however, was so imperfect, that Dr Cullen thought it necessary to publish a more correct edition, which, however, did not make its appearance till 1789, the year before his death.

On the death of Dr White, the professor of the institutes of medicine, in 1766, the patrons offered the chair to Dr Cullen, who accepted it, and resigned that of chemistry in favour of Dr Black, whose talents in that department were already known and appreciated. During the same year Dr Rutherford, professor of the practice of physic in the university, died, and Dr John Gregory having become a candidate for the vacant chair along with Dr Cullen, was appointed thereto by the patrons. It is usually stated that a compromise was entered into between Dr Cullen and Dr Gregory, by which they agreed to lecture every alternate year on the institutes and on the practice of medicine, during their joint lives, reserving to the survivor the power to hold either chair he should prefer. The fact is, that Dr Cullen, on the death of Dr Rutherford, gave a course of lectures on the practice of physic during that same winter (1766); but Dr Gregory, after his appointment to the chair, lectured on the practice of physic during the three successive sessions, 1767, 1768, and 1769, and it was not till the conclusion of this, his third course, that the above arrangement was entered into between these eminent professors. Never, perhaps, was a literary engagement entered into which could have proved more beneficial to the students than this. Both these men possessed great talents, though of a kind extremely dissimilar. Each had certain failings and defects, which the other knew, and endeavoured to counteract. They co-operated, therefore, in the happiest manner to enlarge the understanding and to forward the pursuits of their pupils. But unfortunately this arrangement was brought to a premature close by the sudden death of Dr John Gregory, on the 9th of February 1773, in the forty-ninth year of his age. After this period Dr Cullen confined himself to the delivery of lectures on the practice of physic. This branch of science he continued to teach till a few months before his death, which took place on the 5th of February 1790, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.

As a lecturer Cullen was the greatest ornament to the university of Edinburgh, at a time when its lustre shone bright. His lectures were delivered rere voc, without having been previously written out. The vigour of his mind was such, that nothing more was necessary than a few short notes to prevent him varying from the general order which he had laid down for the course. This gave to his discourses an ease, a vivacity, a variety and a force which are rarely to be met with in academical discourses; while the particular illustrations were always new, and adapted to the circumstances which attracted the general attention of the day. Dr Cullen considered that the proper business of a preceptor was to put his pupils into a proper train of study, so as to enable them to prosecute those studies at a future period. He did not therefore strive so much to make his pupils versant with the details of any particular subject, as to give them a general view of the whole; to show them what had been already ascertained regarding it, and to point out what still remained to be discovered. In fact, he wished to put them in a train of study which should enable them at a future period to investigate the causes of those difficulties which obstructed the path of medicine, and by their labours advance it to greater perfection. He thus succeeded in stimulating the mental faculties of his students; and instead of labouring himself to supply deficiencies which far exceeded the power of any one man to accomplish, he set thousands to work to fulfil the task, giving to their minds an impetus that sustained them in their labours. His external appearance was striking and pleasing, though not elegant. His countenance was expressive, and his eye lively and penetrating. In person he was tall and thin; but he stooped much, and when he walked he had a contemplative look, and seemed to be insensible to what was passing around him.

Previous to the days of Cullen, and during his early life, the medical philosophy or medical doctrines of Boerhaave were universally taught in the schools. Boerhaave attempted to combine into one system the vital philosophy of Hippocrates (the vis medicatrix naturae), the chemicohumoral principle of Paracelsus, the mechanical doctrines of Bellini, and a few of the other doctrines taught by former medical philosophers. He attributed, however, more to the chemical and mechanical forces than to the powers of life, and of course embraced a large portion of the doctrine of the humoral pathologists. Cullen, seeing that many of the facts then known were irreconcilable with Boerhaave's doctrines, became its warm opponent, especially taking offence at those doctrines which attributed almost every disease to a vitiation of the fluids of the body. Indeed, he might almost be said to have adopted as his motto the celebrated aphorism of Hoffman, "Universa pathologia longe rectius atque facilius ex vitio motuum microcosmicorum in solidis, quam ex variis affectionibus vitiosorum humorum, deduci atque explicari possit, adeoque omnis generis nervosi affectionibus sint referendae." Living at the time he did, when the doctrines of the humoral pathologists were carried to an extreme extent, and witnessing the ravages which disease made on the solid structures of the body, it was not surprising that he should oppose a doctrine which appeared to him to lead to a false practice, and to fatal results, and adopt one which attributed more to the agency of the solids, and very little to that of the fluids of the body. The Cullenian system was certainly an immense improvement on those which preceded it, and has served as a valuable stepping-stone for the rational doctrines which now prevail. He was obliged to introduce the doctrine of a spasm in the extreme vessels in order to account, on his theory, for many of the phenomena of disease; still we cannot refuse to him the honour of having been an able and successful improver in medical science. His classification of diseases was remarkable for its simplicity and clearness. He divided diseases into four great classes—1st, Pyrexiae or febrile diseases, as typhus fever; 2d, Neuroses, or nervous diseases, as epilepsy; 3d, Cachexies, or diseases resulting from bad habit of body, as scurvy; and, 4th, Locales, or local diseases, as cancer. His nosological arrangement has served to a considerable extent as the groundwork of modern nosologies, and was a great improvement, both in simplicity and clearness, on the involved productions of his predecessors. Cullen's chief works are, First Lines of the Practice of Physic, Edin. 1774, 4 vols. 8vo; and a second edition, published during his life in 1788; Institutions of Medicine, Edin. 1770, 12mo; Synopsis Nosologie Methodica, Edin. 1783, 2 vols. 8vo; Treatise on the Materia Medica, Edin. 1789, 2 vols. 4to.