The Scottish Society of the History of Medicine: Report of Proceedings, Session 1970–71

The death of Professor-Emeritus John Glaister took place on 4 October 1971. He occupied the regius chair of forensic medicine at Glasgow University for thirty-one years. Like his father who held the same chair before him, Professor Glaister was a distinguished figure in the field of forensic medicine, especially in Scotland. But it was an English murder that made him well known to the public at large throughout Britain. With the late Professors Sir Sydney Smith and James C. Brash of Edinburgh, Glaister solved the riddle of the human remains which led to the conviction of Dr. Buck Ruxton in 1936. Glaister also claimed to have helped Erle Stanley Gardner in the writing of some of the latter's Perry Mason stories. Only a few months before Glaister's death, Dr. J. Malcolm Cameron, in a paper delivered at Aberdeen, bemoaned the fact that academic forensic medicine in Britain was in danger of extinction. Referring to the rise and fall of the discipline since the foundation of the first chair in Britain at Edinburgh in 1807, all the established chairs in England and Wales had lapsed though there were still personal ones in London. One chair, the regius chair of forensic medicine at Glasgow, is the only one filled at present in Scotland. Following the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Medical Education, 1965-68, that an organization should be formed to play a major part in training for community medicine, the Presidents of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of Edinburgh and London and of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow announced, in October 1971, that the three Colleges had combined to form a Faculty of Community Medicine within their own structure. The inaugural meeting of the new Faculty of Community Medicine was held in the London College on 15 March 1972. To mark the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Edinburgh MedicoChirurgical Society, a wreath was laid by its President on the grave of the Society's founder, Dr. Andrew Duncan senior, on 3 November 1971. Duncan's grave is situated in Buccleuch Parish Churchyard. The following day, on 4 November, a plaque was unveiled on the wall of the new Midlothian County Buildings, Edinburgh, to mark the site of the former hall and rooms of the Royal Medical Society at 7 Melbourne Place. The plaque was unveiled