Scotland's Pioneers of Medicine

'James' Miranda Barry (1799-1865)

Miranda Barry, born of Irish and English descent, was the first woman doctor in the Western world. Posing as a boy, she entered and graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 1814, and then served in the British Military disguised as a male surgeon for over forty-five years, working throughout the British colonies. Barry is credited with improving conditions in barracks and military hospitals and attempting to raise the standard of public health.

Elsie Inglis (1864-1917)

Elsie Inglis was one of Scotland’s most prominent women's rights activists and Edinburgh's most famous woman doctor. Through the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies she founded the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in 1914 – an international emergency organisation that brought medical help to tens of thousands of allied troops in the First World War.

Joesph, Lord Lister (1827-1912)

Joseph Lister came to Edinburgh in 1853 after graduating in medicine in London. In 1866 Lister introduced carbolic acid as an antiseptic, to kill airborne bacteria and to prevent their transmission into wounds from the air of the operating theatre. He was appointed Professor of Surgery in 1869 and continued to develop improved methods of antisepsis that revolutionised surgical practice.

Mungo Park (1771–1806)

Born near Selkirk the explorer and travel writer Mungo Park studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. On an expedition to Sumatra, working his passage as 'ship’s surgeon' he discovered eight new species of fish. He was killed in an ambush on his second expedition to West Africa while trying to find the source of the River Niger.

Professor Ian Wilmut

Professor Ian Wilmut works at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which specializes in research on farm and other animals. His work hit the headlines when he and his team became the first scientists to rewrite the laws of biology by developing the nuclear transfer cloning technique that led to the birth of Dolly the sheep (1997 - 2003). His research interests revolve around how animals develop in early life.

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

Sir Alexander Fleming was born at Lochfield near Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6th, 1881. Early in his medical life, Fleming became interested in the natural bacterial action of the blood and in antiseptics. In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he observed that mould had developed accidently on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He named the active substance penicillin

Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870)

Born in Bathgate, West Lothian, the son of a baker, at the age of 14 James Young Simpson enrolled to study medicine at Edinburgh University. He went on to become one of the world’s most famous medical pioneers. He specialised in obstetrics becoming Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University in 1840 and opened a Dispensary for Women and Children in St John Street, Edinburgh.

Sir William Fergusson (1808-1877)

Born in Prestonpans, East Lothian, Fergusson, the greatest surgeon of his day, studied Medicine in Edinburgh later moving to London where he became surgeon to Queen Victoria and President of the Royal College of Surgeons of London. As Dr Robert Knox's assistant during the Burke and Hare scandal, Fergusson received the bodies from the murderers – asking few questions and was likely the inspiration for the main character in James Bridie's 1930 play The Anatomist.