Surgeon Andrew Douglas RN
Andrew Douglas, physician, was born in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, and
received a medical education at Edinburgh. He was appointed a surgeon in
the navy in 1756, and served several years. Afterwards he was a surgeon
at Deal, where he married Mary Carter, the younger half-sister of the
poet and translator Elizabeth Carter (1707-1806; ODNB). At some point,
he left Deal for Edinburgh to complete his education, graduating Doctor
of Medicine in 1775. He was admitted as a Licentiate of the College of
Physicians on 30 September 1776.
From this time, Douglas settled in London, except for September to June
1778, the period of an unsuccessful negotiation with Eleazar Davy
(1724-1803) for the lease of a house in Yoxford, Suffolk, where, Douglas
wrote, his wife would ‘be impatient to transport herself from the noise
& smoke of town [London], to the green fields & quiet of this sweet
spot’, and Mary Douglas herself lamented the necessity of leaving ‘a
country to whose air I am so much indebted’. Back in London, Douglas
served as physician to Elizabeth Carter and her circles, but also earned
a reputation for himself in midwifery. He became a Physician to Charity
for Delivering Poor Married Women and contributed to the literature of
midwifery with his Observations on an Extraordinary Case of Ruptured
Uterus (1785).
After the death of his first wife, Douglas married the widow, Mary
Sharpe Beauvoir, herself a friend and former travelling companion of his
sister-in-law, Elizabeth Carter. As a wealthy heiress, the new Mary
Douglas allowed Douglas to give up his practice, and the Douglases
travelled on the continent from 1792 to 1796, partly to improve Mary
Douglas’s health. Prevented from returning overland through France,
Douglas successfully petitioned the French Directory for an exception,
and had privately printed both his and his wife’s journals of this
journey as Notes of a Journey from Berne to England.
From 1800, the Douglases settled at Ednam House, Roxburghshire. It was
on a journey from there in June 1806, that Andrew died at Buxton, on 11
June 1806, after short illness.
Note:
• A reel, named
Mrs Douglas of Ednam may have been composed in honour of his wife.
Ednam House was sold shortly after his death to John Robertson, a
successful merchant in London but originally from Kelso. (His
brother-in-law ran the Ednam brewery.)
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