Background
He was born at Ayr 19 June 1773 into a prominent local family.
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William Fergusson
Edit ProfileEducation
From the Ayr academy he went to attend the medical classes at Edinburgh, where he graduated Doctor of Medicine, afterwards attending the London hospitals.
Career
1773–1846) was a Scottish inspector-general of military hospitals, and medical writer In 1794 he became assistant-surgeon in the army, and served in Holland, the West Indies, the Baltic, the Iberian Peninsula, and in the expedition against Guadeloupe in 1815. Fergusson is widely quoted (though often misspelt) as a source of accounts of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, where he was present (as Staff-Surgeon of the troops embarked) with Admiral Lord Nelson on the flagship Elephant, before being entrusted with the conveyance of the British wounded to Yarmouth.
Having retired from military service in 1817, he settled in practice at Edinburgh, but moved four years later to Windsor on the invitation of the Duke of Gloucester, on whose staff he had been for twenty years.
He acquired a lucrative practice both in the town and country around, which he carried on till 1843, when he was disabled by paralysis. He died in January 1846.
His personal papers are preserved in the library of the University of Yale.
