Professor Sir John Struthers - anatomist and zoologist

Introduction

Sir John Struthers, MD, LLD, FRCSE (1823-1899) occupied the chair of anatomy in the University of Aberdeen with distinction for 26 years. This was a time of great change in medical education, both locally and nationally.

Sir John Struthers

The Aberdeen Medical School had been launched in 1860, following the enforced fusion by the University Commissioners of the previously separate universities and medical schools at King's and Marischal Colleges. Medical teaching was thereafter centred at Marischal College, and John Struthers, who was appointed professor of anatomy in 1863, by his forceful personality, was to emerge as a major figure in local medical politics. He was the initial proponent of the proposal to establish a chair in pathology, eventually endowed in 1882, was the driving force behind the reorganisation and extensions to the Old Infirmary Buildings at Woolmanhill, and was much involved with the major extensions at Marischal College.

In 1883, he was also appointed Aberdeen University member of the recently established General Medical Council, and was later elected chairman of their education committee, and had a profound influence on medical education in the United Kingdom. It was on his initiative that the council endorsed the motion to extend the course of study for a medical qualification from four years, which was then common, to at least five years, and introduced proposal to strengthen clinical training.

His background

He was born near Dunfermline in 1823, the middle of three sons of a flax spinner. All three sons studied medicine. John qualified in Edinburgh in 1845 after a distinguished undergraduate career. His initial intentions were to be a surgeon and he took the post of extra-mural lecturer in anatomy in Surgeon's Hall before obtaining his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1847. He was then appointed assistant surgeon and later full surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, but continued as lecturer in anatomy. He then decided to make anatomy his full-time career, and was appointed to the chair in Aberdeen.

His early researches were on the orbital muscles and their nerve supply, but in the early 1860s he became a convinced Darwinian, and most of his subsequent studies were concerned with the study of vestigial and rudimentary structures, and variation and adaptation. (Darwin refers to Struthers' researches on the anatomy of the upper arm in the first chapter of his book, The Descent of Man).

Following his appointment in Aberdeen he spent much time and effort building up a museum of zoological specimens to illustrate Darwin's theory of common descent. This led to constant demands to the Senatus for extra space and funds to house and purchase specimens, to the alarm of his faculty colleagues. Many of the specimens were prepared by himself and he became particularly interested in the study of nature's largest mammal - the whale.

From: Professor Struthers and The Tay Whale by M. J. Williams, published in 1996 in the Scottish Medical Journal. (Scot Med J 1996: 41 92-94). Reproduced with permission.