Background
Cullen was born on April 15, 1710, in Hamilton, Scotland. His father William was a lawyer retained by the Duke of Hamilton as a factor, and his mother was Elizabeth Roberton of Whistlebury.
University Ave, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom
Cullen briefly attended the University of Glasgow in 1729, but in the same year moved on to a short-lived apprenticeship with John Paisley, a highly regarded Glaswegian surgeon-apothecary. During the mid-1730's he attended several courses at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, but he remained a surgeon until he acquired a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1740.
Auchincampbell Rd, Hamilton ML3 6PE, United Kingdom
Cullen was first educated at home and then at Hamilton Grammar School.
University Ave, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom
Cullen briefly attended the University of Glasgow in 1729, but in the same year moved on to a short-lived apprenticeship with John Paisley, a highly regarded Glaswegian surgeon-apothecary. During the mid-1730's he attended several courses at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, but he remained a surgeon until he acquired a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1740.
University of, 82 Hillhead St, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom
Cameo of William Cullen (close-up), Hunterian Museum, Glasgow
agriculturalist chemist physician scientist
Cullen was born on April 15, 1710, in Hamilton, Scotland. His father William was a lawyer retained by the Duke of Hamilton as a factor, and his mother was Elizabeth Roberton of Whistlebury.
Cullen was first educated at home and then at Hamilton Grammar School. He briefly attended the University of Glasgow in 1729, but in the same year moved on to a short-lived apprenticeship with John Paisley, a highly regarded Glaswegian surgeon-apothecary. During the mid-1730's he attended several courses at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, but he remained a surgeon until he acquired a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1740.
After being apprenticed to John Paisley, in whose library he laid the foundation of his wide knowledge, Cullen moved to London in 1729; the following year he was appointed surgeon to a vessel proceeding to the West Indies. In 1736 Cullen returned to Hamilton, where for eight years he remained in private practice; during the earlier part of this period, William Hunter resided with him as a pupil.
In 1744 the removal of the Cullen family to Glasgow marked the beginning of an academic career that remained unbroken until December 1789. Lecturing at first extramurally, Cullen soon reached an agreement with Dr. Johnstone, the professor of medicine, to deliver a course of lectures on that subject - which Johnstone himself had never seen any necessity to do. The year 1747 marked the foundation of the first independent lectureship in chemistry in the British Isles: the university provided a modest sum for the setting up and maintenance of a laboratory. The incumbents were at first William Cullen and John Carrick, assistant to Robert Hamilton, professor of anatomy. The early death of Carrick left Cullen as the first undisputed university teacher of chemistry - not chemistry and medicine, as the earlier chair at Edinburgh was entitled from its inception until it became the present chair of biochemistry. Cullen was, however, permitted to continue his lectures on the theory and practice of physic, botany, and materia medica.
Cullen’s published contribution to the advancement of science (as distinguished from medicine) consists of one paper. His reputation as a teacher is based not merely on skill in imparting information but on a number of innovations, in no one of which he may have been an innovator, but which had never previously been brought together by one man. From the first he lectured in English and freely developed an orderly series of his own notes rather than reading from a stereotyped text; many of his points were illustrated by simple demonstrations, and students were encouraged to take part in laboratory operations at stated times. Above all, Cullen carried the science of chemistry beyond medicine by emphasizing its basic importance both to natural philosophy and to many “arts,” such as agriculture, mining, brewing, vinegar manufacture, bleaching, and the manufacture of alkalies. It was his boast, supported by the evidence of records of his lectures extending over many years, that only “when the languor and debility of age shall restrain me…shall I cease to make some corrections of my plan or some addition to my course.”
On 2 January 1751, after some delay, Cullen was inducted into the chair of medicine at Glasgow, by then vacated by Johnstone, but continued his lectures in chemistry until the summer of 1755, when Plummer was struck down by an illness that rendered him incapable of continuing his chemical lectures at Edinburgh. The intrigues pursuant to the support of rival candidates for succession form a locus classicus for the study of the division of university governance between academic Senatus and administrative town council: without the strong hand taken by the latter, it is unlikely that Cullen would ever have entered on his illustrious career in Edinburgh. A somewhat similar and even more squalid display occurred when the succession to the chair of practical medicine was raised; on 1 November 1766 Cullen succeeded Robert Whytt in the chair of the institutes (theory) of medicine, later sharing with John Gregory in alternate years the task of lecturing in the practice of physic, in the chair of which he succeeded Gregory in 1773. In these controversies Cullen’s greatest pupil, Joseph Black, had been a rival; but no shadow of personal acrimony had ever marred their friendship.
Cullen’s sole paper, although appearing in the same volume of Essays and Observations Physical and Literary Read Before a Society in Edinburgh and Published by Them (1756), was evidently based on experiments conducted before he left Glasgow. As Cullen himself observed, Richmann had already (1747) given a “very exact account of the phenomena” of the cold produced by evaporating fluids: Cullen’s achievement was to repeat the experiments on a variety of fluids under a receiver exhausted by the air pump; in the case of “nitrous aether,” the surrounding water, contained in a slightly larger vessel, was frozen.
Cullen made no claim to novelty in his exposition of chemistry, although in an earlier (unpublished) paper on “salts” (which then included acids and bases) he was moving toward a classification in terms of the compounds between the “four” acids (to which he later and guardedly seems to add phosphoric, arsenic, and boric) and the “three” alkalies. Strongly influenced by Boyle (rather than by the narrow Newtonianism then fashionable), he gave but nodding respect to atoms, considering them hardly relevant to the understanding of chemical operations; but he was probably the first to give symbolic precision to the “affinity” tables then much in vogue, using reversed arrows to represent what came to be called “double decompositions.” He was an uneasy phlogistonist and at one stage suspected that the increase in weight following “calcination” was due to an “acid” in the air; nothing came of it, however.
No adequate appraisal of Cullen’s contribution to science can omit reference to his work on nosology or to his deep understanding of the contemporary empirical philosophy, explicit in one of his lectures on the institutes of medicine and everywhere implicit in the orderly deployment of his system of chemistry. He also played a prominent part in the founding of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Medical Society (Edinburgh). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1777 but never signed the roll attesting formal admission.
(Part 1)
1785
In 1741, Cullen married Anna Johnstone, a lady whose charm and intelligence were as much appreciated as were her husband’s. To them were born four daughters and seven sons, one of whom, Robert, rose to be a judge of the Court of Session.