MACNISH, ROBERT, LL.D.,
a popular writer, known in his lifetime as “The modern Pythagorean,”
the son of a medical practitioner in Glasgow, was born in
Henderson’s Court, Jamaica Street, of that city, February 15, 1802.
He received the elements of his education partly in his native town,
and partly at a classical academy at Hamilton, about eleven miles
from it, and afterwards studied medicine. He obtained the degree of
master of surgery at the early age of eighteen, when he became
assistant to Dr. Henderson of Clyth at Caithness. He remained there
for about eighteen months, and then went to Paris for a year, with
the view of completing his medical studies. On his return to Glasgow
in 1825, he became assistant to his father, having, the same year,
obtained his diploma from the faculty of physicians and surgeons of
Glasgow, when he gave in, as his inaugural thesis, ‘An Essay on the
Anatomy of Drunkenness.’ Two years afterwards, that is, in 1827,
this essay, extended and improved, was published at Glasgow, when it
formed a thin octavo of 56 pages. It met with a very flattering
reception from the public, and was still farther enlarged in
subsequent editions. Translations of it have appeared in the German
and French languages.
Dr. Macnish’s earliest literary attempts were contributed to
the ‘Inverness Journal,’ when he was in the north, and afterwards to
the ‘Literary Melange,’ and ‘The Emmet,’ two Glasgow periodicals of
humble pretensions. In 1822 he sent two contributions to Constable’s
Edinburgh Magazine, the one entitled ‘Mac Vurich the Murderer,’ and
the other ‘The Dream Confirmed,’ both founded on incidents which he
had picked up in the Highlands. In 1826 he forwarded his first
communication to ‘Blackwood’s Magazine,’ being a tale, entitled ‘The
Metempsychosis.’ It appeared with the signature of ‘A Modern
Pythagorean,’ the name affixed to all his after productions in that
and other magazines. In 1827 he became acquainted with Dr. Moir of
Musselburgh, afterwards his biographer.
In 1830, Dr. Macnish published at Glasgow a treatise, entitled
‘The Philosophy of Sleep,’ which was equally well received with his
former work, and also went through several editions. In 1834
appeared ‘The Book of Aphorisms,’ some of which had originally been
contributed to Fraser’s Magazine. The same year he visited the
continent, and in the following year he made a tour in Belgium and
Holland, France, Switzerland, and Germany.
His last publication was a small treatise in 1835, entitled an
‘Introduction to Phrenology,’ to which science he had become a
convert. From Hamilton college, United States, he, at this time,
received the degree of LL.D. He died of typhus fever, January 16,
1837, in his 35th year. His Tales, Essays, and Sketches,
were published at Edinburgh, in two volumes, in 1838, under the
title of the ‘Modern Pythagorean,’ with a memoir of the author, by
his friend, Dr. Moir of Musselburgh, the Delta of Blackwood’s
Magazine.
