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DOUGLAS, JOHN, the brother
of the eminent physician whose biography we have already given, attained
to considerable eminence as a surgeon, in which capacity he officiated to
the Westminster infirmary. His name is principally distinguished among
those of other medical men, for his celebrity as a lithotomist, and
for having written a treatise insisting on the utility of bark in
mortification. His work on the high operation for the stone, obtained for
him considerable reputation; and will give the medical reader an accurate
notion of the state of the surgical art at the period in which he lived.
He also practised midwifery, and criticised with no inconsiderable
asperity the works of Chamberlain and Chapman. He appears, indeed, to have
been the author of several controversial works, which have deservedly
floated down the stream of time into obscurity. Among others we may notice
one, entitled "Remarks on a late pompous Work;" a
severe and very unjust criticism on Cheselden’s admirable Osteology. He
wrote some useful treatises on the employment of purgatives in Syphilis;
but by far his most important was "an account of Mortifications,
and of the surprising effect of Bark in putting a stop to their
progress." This remedy had already been tried successfully in
gout by Sydenham; in typhus by Ramazzini and Lanzoni; by Monro, Wall, and
Huxham, in malignant variolo; and after Rushworth had tried it in the
gangrene following intermittent fevers, it was introduced by Douglas, and
afterwards by Shipton, Grindall, Werlhof, and Heister, in ordinary cases
of gangrene. [Spreyel Histoire de la Medicine, tom. v. f. 412.] This same
Scottish family, we may add, gave birth to Robert Douglas, who published a
treatise on the generation of animal heat; but the rude state of
Physiology, and of animal chemistry, at that period, rendered abortive all
speculation on this difficult, but still interesting subject of
investigation.
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