Background
Andrew Plummer was born around 1698 in Scotland.
Leiden University, Leiden and The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
Plummer entered the medical school at Leiden on September 5, 1720. He received the Doctor of Medicine on 23 July 1722.
Andrew Plummer was born around 1698 in Scotland.
After completing his early education in Edinburgh, Plummer entered the medical school at Leiden on September 5, 1720. He received the Doctor of Medicine on 23 July 1722.
After completing his education in medical school at Leiden, where Plummer received the Doctor of Medicine in 1722, on 4 February 1724, he petitioned the College of Physicians of Edinburgh “for tryall”; he was examined and then licensed to practice on 25 February.
Plummer was elected a fellow of the College in September and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 3 November 1724. A week later he and three other young physicians purchased a house next to the “physic gardens” for a chemical “elaboratory” in which to instruct students. Although a medical faculty had been appointed at Edinburgh in 1685, in 1720 Alexander Monro (Primus), who had recently returned from Leiden, was appointed a professor of anatomy and thus became the “Father” of the Edinburgh Medical School.
For two years Plummer and his three colleagues lectured privately; but on February 1726 they were appointed to the faculty, with full powers “to profess and teach medicine in all its branches, examine candidates, and do everything required to the graduations of doctors of medicine.” The medical school thus became a formal part of the university; rooms were assigned in the college, and the administration of the examination for the Doctor of Medicine degree was transferred from the Royal College of Physicians to the medical faculty.
From 10 March 1756 Cullen was a joint professor of chemistry with Plummer but succeeded to the chair when Plummer died. Black received the chair ten years later and developed it into a famous seat of chemical learning.
Plummer made the first chemical analysis of the waters of Moffat Spa; and in 1745, in a letter to Cullen, Black alluded to experiments by Plummer on the analysis of pit coal. Plummer’s personal wealth enabled him to leave his practice; and after suffering a stroke in 1755, he sold his laboratory to Cullen for £120 - a great bargain since it was near the infirmary, where, from 1741, students had attended clinical lectures.
Plummer’s name was familiar to the medical profession for nearly two centuries because of his popular “Plummer's pills,” which were composed of calomel and golden sulfuret of antimony and were used to treat venereal diseases, cutaneous eruptions, and other complaints. His pill received great acclaim, especially after its popularization in Germany by Paul Werlhof and its introduction into European pharmacopeias. In his formulation of the pill Plummer substituted calomel for the ethiops mineral (which had been condemned by Boerhaave) in the combination of mercury and antimony used in older ethiopic pills; thus his pill was sometimes called Plummer’s ethiops.
Plummer taught medical chemistry, which he had studied under Boerhaave at Leiden. John Fothergill, who had been a student of Plummer's in 1734, stated that Plummer knew chemistry well and because of his broad knowledge of science was dubbed “a living library” although diffidence obscured his talents as a lecturer. Plummer avoided the mysticism of Helmont and the alchemists and thus established a modern approach to teaching chemistry in the British Isles; his method was then more fully developed by his successors, William Cullen, and Joseph Black.