Robert Whytt

Robert Whytt (1714–1766) was a Scottish physician. His work, on unconscious reflexes, tubercular meningitis, urinary bladder stones, and hysteria, is remembered now most for his book on diseases of the nervous system. He served as President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Life The second son of Robert Whytt of Bennochy (near Kirkcaldy in Fife), advocate, and Jean, daughter of Antony Murray of Woodend, Perthshire, he was born in Edinburgh on 6 September 1714, six months after his father's death. Having graduated M.A. at the University of St Andrews in 1730, he went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Two years before this he had succeeded, on the death of his elder brother George, to the family estate. Whytt devoted himself to the study of anatomy, under the first Monro. Going to London in 1734, Whytt became a pupil of William Cheselden, while he visited the wards of the London hospitals. After this he attended the lectures of Jacob B. Winslow in Paris, of Herman Boerhaave and Bernhard Siegfried Albinus at Leyden. He took the degree of M.D. at Reims on 2 April 1736. On 3 June 1737, a similar degree was conferred on him by the University of St Andrews, and on 21 June he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. On 27 November 1738, he was elected to the fellowship, and began practice as a physician.