Charles Collingnon (1725-1785): Cambridge physician, anatomist, and moralist.

THE REPUTATION of Charles Collignon, Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge from 1753 to 1785, has suffered at the hands of most of those few historians who have considered him worthy of mention. Winstanley1 said that he did not know enough about anatomy to teach it effectively, and that he had a practice in the town. He quoted the Reverend William Cole, who described Collignon as "a third rate practitioner". However Winstanley gave no other evidence to support his assertion that Collignon was incompetent. Cole's other comments on Collignon, which have also been widely quoted, draw a cruel caricature. "He is an ingenuous honest man, and if they had picked the three Kingdoms for a proper person to represent an anatomical professor, they could not have pitched upon a more proper one, for he is a perfect skeleton himself, absolutely a walking shadow, nothing but skin and bones: indeed I never saw so meagre a figure, much as one can conceive a figure to be after the flesh and substance is all dried away and wasted and nothing left to cover the bones, but a shrivelled dry leather; such is the figure of our present professor of anatomy; 19 June 1770."2 Collignon's biographer in the Dictionary of national biography3 gave a brief and not entirely accurate account of his life, and quoted Cole, at some length. Macalister, the historian of Cambridge anatomy, conceded that in some respects Collignon was a remarkable man.4 A recent anatomist-historian5 found Winstanley's unsubstantiated statement about Collignon's ignorance of anatomy "almost unbelievable". During the course of a detailed study of the records of Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, Collignon's name became familiar as that of an active and much respected physician, who was prominent in day-to-day administration and in shaping policy, and was very unlike the rather pitiful character so frequently depicted. It seemed therefore to be of interest to attempt to reassess Collignon's life and work. Charles Collignon was born in London on 30 January 1725. He has been con*Arthur Rook, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. 1 D. A. Winstanley, Unreformed Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1935, p. 154. 'British Library, Cole MSS xxxiii, 264. 8 G. T. Bettany, entry on Charles Collignon in Dictionary of national biography. 4A. Macalister, The history of the study of anatomy at Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1891. 6 B. Towers, 'Anatomy and physiology before 1850', in A. Rook (editor), Cambridge and its contribution to medicine, London, Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1971, p. 68. Dr. Towers is mainly concerned to redress the character assassinations suffered by Sir Busick Harwood and William Stukeley. Collignon has suffered a similar fate.