David James Hamilton was a Scottish pathologist, known for his work on the diseases of sheep.
Background
Born on 6 March 1849 at Falkirk, he was third child and second son of the nine children of George Hamilton, Doctor of Medicine, medical practitioner in the town, who wrote for Chambers"s Encyclopædia, by his wife Mary Wyse, daughter of a naval surgeon.
Career
At the age of 17 Hamilton became a medical student at Edinburgh, and was drawn to pathology by William Rutherford Sanders. After qualifying in 1870 he was house surgeon at the old Edinburgh Infirmary, resident medical officer at Chalmers" Hospital, Edinburgh, and for two years at the Northern Hospital, Liverpool, where he wrote a prize essay on Diseases and injuries of the spinal cord. lieutenant enabled him to spend two years in working at pathology in Vienna, Munich, Strassburg, and Paris.
In 1876 he returned as demonstrator of pathology to Edinburgh, and was also pathologist to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
During Professor Sanders"s illness (1880-1881) he delivered the lectures, but was passed over in the choice of his successor. There he spent the rest of his career.
He was the first to introduce the practical teaching of bacteriology into general class work. He initiated the bacteriological diagnosis of diphtheria and typhoid fever in the north of Scotland.
Hamilton was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1908 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
In 1907 the University of Edinburgh made him an honorary Doctor of Laws He died on 19 February 1909 at Aberdeen, and was buried there. Hamilton married:
in 1894, Catherine, daughter of John Wilson of South Bankaskine, Falkirk. She died without issue in June 1908.