Robert, an eminent physician, was born at Edinburgh on the 6th September 1714. After receiving the first rudiments of school education, he was sent to the University of St Andrews; 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, St Clair, Plummer, Altson, 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 in London, Paris, and Leyden, he took the degree of doctor of physic at Rheims in 1736, being then in the twenty-seventh year of his age. Upon his return to his native country, he had the same degree conferred upon him by the University of St Andrews, where he had before taken with applause, the degree of master of arts. Not long afterwards, in the year 1737, he was admitted a licentiate by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; and the year following he was raised to the rank of a fellow. 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 to the first vacant chair in the univer- Accordingly, when Dr St Clair resigned his academical appointments, Dr Whytt was elected his successor on the 20th of June 1746, and began his first course of the institutions of medicine at the commencement of the next winter session. In 1752, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London; in 1761, he was appointed first physician to the king in 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 was 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 was An Essay on the Vital and other Involuntary Motions of Animals. 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. His third work, entitled Physiological Essays, was first published in the year 1755. His Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which are commonly called Nervous, Hypochondriac, and Hysteric, was published in 1764. The last of Dr Whytt's writings is entitled 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 papers, which appeared in different publications, particularly in the Philosophical Transactions, the Medical Essays, the Medical Observations, and the Physical and Literary Essays. He died on the 15th of April 1766, in the fifty-second year of his age.