Robert Macnish

Robert Macnish was a Scottish physician, surgeon, philosopher and writer, born in Glasgow on 15 February 1802 to a family of doctors; both his father and his grandfather practised medicine. He studied at the University of Glasgow, took his medical degree in 1825 and joined the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 1827, after a year of study in Paris. His doctoral thesis became The Anatomy of Drunkenness, first published in 1827 and expanded through five editions, and he went on to write The Philosophy of Sleep and an Introduction to Phrenology while contributing fiction to Blackwood's Magazine. He died of typhus fever at Glasgow on 16 January 1837, aged thirty-four.