William Smellie

MY object today is to try, I am sure very inadequately, to tell you something of the life of that illustrious fellow countryman of mine, William Smellie, the Master of British Midwifery, who was born in Lanark in the year 1697. Smellie lived during the reigns of four sovereigns-Queen Anne and the first three Hanoverian Georges. He saw the union of the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707, and lived through the two Jacobite rebellions, the '17 and the '45. Lord Lovat, the last person to be beheaded in public, was executed in Tower Hill in 1747 for his part in the battle of Culloden. It is recorded by Smellie that a patient who had an anencephalic foetus blamed her misfortune on the fact that her husband attended the execution ! Addison, Steele and Defoe were dead. Pope and Swift were old men. Samuel Johnson was a contemporary, but did not achieve fame until late in Smellie's life. Hogarth, one of the earliest English painters and the first cartoon artist, was at work in London. Gainsborough and Reynolds were also climbing to fame. Handel and Bach were both revolutionising the world of music, and it is known that Smellie knew of Handel's work, owned an organ and a number of flutes. William Smellie attended the Grammar School in Lanark and subsequently entered the Medical profession by becoming an apprentice to an established practitioner. There is a little doubt concerning the identity of his Principal, but the evidence suggests that it was Mr. Gordon of Glasgow to whom he articled himself. Ultimately, in 1720, at the age of 23, he settled in Lanark in practice on his own account. In 1724 he married Eupham Borland. There were no children. For nineteen years he practised in Lanark, and during this time he improved himself by reading books which were borrowed from Dr. Cullen's library in Hamilton, from Glasgow and from Edinburgh. It is known that he even sent to London to obtain books not available elsewhere. He attended a number of difficult midwifery cases at the request of various midwives, and from that early date he developed the remarkable habit of writing down in detail all the relevant facts. These case records can be read today and should be read by all of us, not once, but many times.