James Inglis (physician)

James Inglis was born in Glasgow on 6 September 1813,[1] the son of James Inglis, a merchant and his wife, Charlotte Spalding, the daughter of Charles Spalding, improver of the diving bell. Through his mother, Inglis was a member of the Smalls of Dirnanean, a Perthshire family that included direct ancestor, James Small, factor of the forfeited Robertson estates after Culloden.

After early schooling in Musselburgh, Inglis became a student at the University of Edinburgh. While a student in Edinburgh, he received the Hope prize for chemistry for his paper, Essay on iodine and bromine.[2] His mentor during this time was Sir George Ballingall.[3] Receiving his medical degree in 1834, he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of England in that same year.[3]

Inglis set up practice at Castle Douglas.[2] In 1835, he performed a brilliant home operation on gunshot victim, Maria Kennedy, removing the bullet from behind her left frontal bone.[2] She had been shot by Kirkcudbright Stewart-officer Robert Blair.[2] The patient survived and Inglis provided detailed testimony of the operation and the condition of the patient at the trial.[2]

In 1837 he moved to the Ripon Public Dispensary. Then in 1838, while at Ripon, Inglis published his Treatise of English Bronchocele.[2] The work documented the epidemiology of goitre, using iodine treatment research Inglis had accumulated in both Scotland and England.[2]

In 1838, Inglis moved his practice to Halifax, West Yorkshire.[2]

Pursuing a lifelong passion for chemistry and geology, Inglis became the curator for the Halifax Literary & Philosophical Society.[3] In 1843, while studying the Halifax coal beds, he discovered a new species of sea lily that he named Nautilus Rawsoni,[4] which he named after Christopher Rawson,[5] the founder of the Halifax Literary & Philosophical Society.[6]

Interested in phrenology, Inglis researched the brain of Eugene Aram, an infamous English murderer.[2]

Inglis was a Freemason and a past Master of the Yorkshire Lodge in Halifax.[7]

Inglis married Louisa Rawson (ca. 1826-1909), the daughter of Jeremiah Rawson, Esq., on 3 May 1842 at St. John the Baptist Church in Halifax.[8] The couple had the following children:

• Charlotte Hannah Louise Inglis (1843-1875), married Priestly Haigh Norris[9]
• Major James Argyll Spalding Inglis (1848-1883), British District Commissioner of Nicosia, 1882-1883[10]
• Charles John Inglis (b. 1850), a solicitor

A great-granddaughter of Inglis was Surrealist performance artist Sheila Legge. A brother-in-law of Inglis, and a fellow physician, was Dr. Charles Ransford.[2]

Inglis died at Halifax on 9 March 1851.[7] His sister, St. Clair Ransford, attributed his early death to cardiac arrest, likely due to several bouts of rheumatic fever as a young man.[2] Dr. Inglis and his wife were buried in Holy Trinity Churchyard in Halifax,[7] which unfortunately has been converted into a car park.

• James Inglis at Find a Grave
• Treatise of English Bronchocele by Dr. James Inglis