Stuart, Alexander

1. Dates

Born: Aberdeen (?), Scotland, 1673

Died: London, 15 Sept. 1742

Dateinfo: Dates Certain

Lifespan: 69

2. Father

Occupation: Unknown

No information.

No information on financial status.

3. Nationality

Birth: Scottish

Career: English

Death: English

4. Education

Schooling: Aberdeen; Leiden, M.D.

Marischal College, Aberdeen; M.A., 1691. The M.A. was the initial degree at the Scottish university; I list it as a B.A.

Leiden, 1709; M.D., 1711. These dates are correct.

M.D., Cambridge, 1728--by patronage.

5. Religion

Affiliation: Anglican

By assumption.

6. Scientific Disciplines

Primary: Physiology, Medicine

Disseratio de structura et motu musculari, 1738. Three Lectures on Muscular Motion, 1739. These two related works, elaborating on his doctoral thesis at Leiden, expounded the doctrines of iatromechanism.

New Discoveries and Improvements in Anatomy and Surgery . . . with Cases and Cures, 1738.

7. Means of Support

Primary: Unknown, Medicine, Patronage

The sparse literature on Stuart says nothing at all about the years between his undergraduate degree and his enrollment at Leiden eighteen years later.

Physician to Westminster Hospital, 1719-33.

Physician to St. George's Hospital, 1733-6. I suspect that both of these positions carried salaries, but they are not mentioned in the literature about Stuart.

Physician to the Queen, 1728.

8. Patronage

Type: Court Official

The Queen.

9. Technological Involvement

Type: Medical Practice

10. Scientific Societies

Memberships: Royal Society, Medical College, Académie Royal des Sciences

Royal Society, 1714. First Croonian Lecturer (on muscular physiology), 1738. Copley medal for this work.

College of Physicians of London, 1728. Censor, 1732, 1741.

Académie Royale des Sciences.

Sources

1. William Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, (London, 1878), 2, 109.
2. Robert W. Innes Smith, English-Speaking Students of Medicine at the University of Leyden, (Edinburgh, 1932), p. 226.

Compiled by:

Richard S. Westfall

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Indiana University

Note: the creators of the Galileo Project and this catalogue cannot answer email on geneological questions.