John Abercrombie was a Scottish physician and philosopher. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him that after James Gregory's death, he was "recognized as the first consulting physician in Scotland". He was the official physician to Heriot's Hospital and Physician to the King for Scotland.
Life
He was the son of George Abercrombie, the minister of East Church, Aberdeen, he was educated at the Grammar School and Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and after graduating as MD in 1803 he settled down to practise in that city, where he soon attained a leading position. In 1810 he was living at 43 York Place. From 1816 he published various papers in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which formed the basis of his more extensive works: Pathological and Practical Researches on Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord, regarded as the first textbook in neuropathology, and Researches on the Diseases of the Intestinal Canal, Liver and other Viscera of the Abdomen, both published in 1828. In 1821 he was elected to the Royal College of Surgeons. For his services as a physician and philanthropist he received many marks of distinction, including the Rectorship of Marischal College in 1835. In 1831 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being Thomas Charles Hope, and served as Vice-President of the Society from 1835 to 1844. In 1831, whilst treating his colleague James Crawford Gregory, he contracted typhus, but appears to have recovered. He also found time for philosophical speculations, and in 1830 he published his Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth, which was followed in 1833 by a sequel, The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. Both works achieved wide popularity at the time of their publication. The Inquiries has been widely cited in treatises on the law of evidence, due to its discussion of probability, certainty, and testimony. An elder of the Church of Scotland, he also wrote The man of faith: or the harmony of Christian faith and Christian character, which he distributed freely. In 1841, he was partially paralyzed, but was able to return to his practice of medicine. He died at his home, 19 York Place, Edinburgh, in 1844 of a ruptured coronary artery. He is buried against the east wall of St Cuthberts Churchyard adjacent to the gateway into Princes Street Gardens. A year after his death his Essays on Christian ethics were published.
