James Gregory FRSE Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh was a Scottish physician and classicist.
Background
He was the eldest son of John Gregory (1724–1773) and Elizabeth Forbes (died 1761), and was born in Aberdeen. He accompanied his father to Edinburgh in 1764, and after going through the usual course of literary studies at that university, he was for a short time a student at Christ Church, Oxford.
Education
He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, King"s College, University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh (Doctor of Medicine 1774), the University of Oxford, and Leyden University. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and, after graduating doctor of medicine in 1774, spent the greater part of the next two years in Leiden, Paris, and in Italy.
Career
lieutenant was there probably that he acquired that taste for classical learning which afterwards distinguished him. In 1783 Gregory was one of the founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. On the illness of William Cullen in 1790 he was appointed joint-professor of the practice of medicine, and he became the head of the School of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh on the death of Doctor Cullen in the same year.
He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1798 to 1801.
His indiscretion in publishing certain private proceedings of the college led to suspension of his fellowship on the 13 May 1809. They had no children.
He had a daughter named Sarah Gregory born in 1784. The family lived together in their father"s huge Georgian townhouse at 10 Ainslie Place on the Moray Estate in the eastern New Town of Edinburgh.
James had bought the property as a brand new house shortly before his death.
Gregory died after being run over by a horse and carriage in Street Andrew Square in Edinburgh on 2 April 1821 and was buried in Canongate Kirkyard on the Royal Mademoiselle (Miss) The grave lies in the extreme south-west corner, immediately to the right hand side of Adam Smith"s grave.