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Up for sale a VERY RARE! "Scottish Physician" Sir Andrew Clark Clipped Signature. This is one of the only known signatures to come to sale in the last 20 years as most document are housed in the permenant collection at the museum of the London Hospital.
ES-9925
Sir
Andrew Clark, 1st Baronet (28 October
1826 – 6 November 1893), was a Scottish
physician and pathologist. He was born in Aberdeen,
the illegitimate son of Amelia Anderson and Andrew Clark. His father, who also
was a physician, died when he was only a few years old. After attending school
in Aberdeen, he was sent by his guardians to Dundee,
attending the High School of Dundee and was then
apprenticed to a pharmacist. Upon returning to Aberdeen he began his medical
studies in the University there. Soon, however, he went
to Edinburgh,
where in the extra-academical school he had a student's career of the most
brilliant description, ultimately becoming assistant to Dr. John Hughes Bennett in the Pathology
Department of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and assistant
demonstrator of anatomy
to Robert Knox.
But symptoms of tuberculosis brought his academic life to a
close and, in the hope that the sea might benefit his health, he joined the
medical department of the Royal Navy in 1848. Next year he
became pathologist to the Haslar
Hospital where T.H. Huxley was one of his colleagues and in
1853 he was the successful candidate for the newly instituted post of curator
to the museum
of the London Hospital. There he intended to devote
all his energies to pathology, but circumstances brought him into active
medical practice. In 1854, the year in which he took his doctor's degree at
Aberdeen, the post of assistant physician to the hospital became vacant and he
was prevailed upon to apply for it. He was fond of telling how his tuberculosis
tendencies gained him the appointment. "He is only a poor Scotch
doctor," it was said, "with but a few months to live; let him have
it." He had it, and two years before his death publicly declared that of
those who were on the staff of the hospital at the time of his selection he was
the only one remaining alive. In 1854, he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1858 a
fellow, and then went in succession through all the offices of honour the
College has to offer, ending in 1888 with the presidency, which he continued to
hold until his death. From the time of his selection as assistant physician to
the London Hospital, his fame rapidly grew until he became a fashionable doctor
with one of the largest practices in London, counting among his patients some
of the most distinguished men of the day. The great number of persons who
passed through his consulting-room every morning rendered it inevitable that to
a large extent his advice should become stereotyped and his prescriptions often
reduced to mere stock formulae, but in really serious cases he was not to be
surpassed in the skill and carefulness of his diagnosis and in his attention to
detail. He delivered the Lumleian
Lectures in 1867 and the Croonian
Lecture in 1885 to the Royal College of Physicians, both on the
subject of pulmonary conditions. He was created a baronet
in 1883 in recognition of his services to medical science. He was elected the
same year President of the Clinical Society of London. In June 1885
he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society In spite of the claims of his practice he found time to
produce a good many books, all written in the precise and polished style on
which he used to pride himself. Doubtless owing largely to personal reasons,
lung diseases and especially lung fibrosis
formed his favourite theme, but he also discussed other subjects, such as kidney
failure, anemia, constipation, etc. He died in
London, after a paralytic stroke, and was buried at Essenden, near his country house at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.