# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/McGrigor, James (1771-1858)

​McGRIGOR, Sir JAMES, M.D. (1771–1858), army surgeon, born at Cromdale, Inverness-shire, 9 April 1771, was eldest of the three sons of Colquhoun McGrigor, merchant, of Aberdeen, and his wife Anne, daughter of Lewis Grant of Lathendrey in Strathspey, Inverness-shire. He was educated at the grammar school at Aberdeen, and afterwards entered the Marischal College, where he graduated M.A.in 1788. He studied medicine at Aberdeen and at Edinburgh, and after his return to Aberdeen in 1789, while an apprentice to Dr. French, physician to the county infirmary, he was one of the founders of a local medico-chirurgical society among the students, which survives as the'ehief medical society in the north of Scotland. Desiring to become an army surgeon, he went to London, where he attended Mr. Wilson's lectures on anatomy, and after the outbreak of war with France obtained, by purchase through the regimental agent, the post of surgeon to De Burgh's regiment, an Irish corps then being raised, ​ and since famous as the 88th or Connaught rangers. His appointment was dated 13 Sept. 1793, and his name was at first spelt in the army list MacGregor. He served with the regiment in Flanders, and in the winter retreat to Bremen in 1794-5, in which his health suffered severely. When the 88th was at Southampton soon after its return, Lieutenant-colonel William Carr Beresford, afterwards Marshal Beresford [q. v.], was appointed to the command of the regiment. Beresford quarrelled with McGrigor, laying on him the hlame of the highly insanitary condition of the regiment, although the regimental infirmary was admitted to be in excellent order, and, among other arbitrary acts, insisted on his attending all parades. McGrigor protested against this treatment, and applied, without success, for exchange to another regiment, but a better understanding prevailed after Beresford voluntarily made a very favourable report of McGrigor's services. Later in the year (1795) the regiment was ordered to the West Indies. Mistaking a sailing-signal, the transport in which McGrigor had embarked started off and reached Barbados alone, long in advance of the other troops. She was supposed to be lost, and McGrigor's place in the regiment was filled up. McGrigor accompanied a detachment of the 25th regiment to Grenada, where the negroes were in revolt (see Higgins, Hist. Bee. 25th Begt. chap, xii.), but was shipwrecked on the way. Meanwhile the 88th had embarked with Admiral Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian [q. v.], but the transports were shattered and dispersed in the great storm of November 1795. Only two companies of the 88th reached 'the West Indies, with which, after serving in Grenada and St. Vincent, McGrigor came home in the autumn of 1 796. In May 1799 he landed with the 88th at Bombay, proceeding with it afterwards to Ceylon, and in 1801 was appointed superintending surgeon of the force of eight thousand European and Indian troops sent up the Red Sea to join the army in Egypt, under Major-general David Baird [see Baird, Sir David]. McGrigor received a commission from the East India Company, so that he might take control of the Indian details. Baird's force landed at Kosseir in May-June 1801, and after crossing the desert to Kenneh, descended the Nile to Rosetta. There McGrigor had to deal with a fatal outbreak of the plague among the troops. When the army evacuated Egypt, McGrigor crossed the desert to Suez, and returned to Bombay with two companies of his regiment. The rest of the regiment returned to England, whither McGrigor followed, narrowly escaping capture by French privateers on the renewal of the war with France. McGrigor was transferred to the royal horse guards (blues), and did duty with them at Canterbury and Windsor, where he was noticed by George HI and Queen Charlotte. Lord Melville [see Dundas, Hbnky, first Viscotot Melville], when at the board of control, had made a fruitless proposal to create a fourth presidency, which should include the eastern islands, and to place McGrigor at the head of the medical board. He proceeded M.D. at Marischal College 20 Feb. 1804, and on 27 June 1805 was made one of the new deputy inspectors-general of hospitals, and placed in charge of the northern district (headquarters York), where he introduced many improvements, and, as in after years, stimulated the zeal of the officers under him by his unfailing courtesy, friendly criticism, and advice. His talents attracted the notice of the Duke of York, who transferred him to the south-western district (headquarters Winchester), subsequently placing tne Portsmouth district and Isle of Wight and a part of the Sussex district under him as well. At this time McGrigor had in medical charge the counties of Sussex, Hants, Dorset, Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester, and Worcester, and South Wales ; the medical organisation of numerous expeditions despatched from Portsmouth at this period was also entrusted to him. Once on the return of the troops from Corunna, carrying fever with them wherever they went, he declared the difficulties of the situation to be 'unsurmountable.' Nevertheless, he surmounted them.
McGrigor's reputation now stood very high. His old chief, Beresford, applied for his services as principal medical officer of the Portuguese army, but before the arrangement could be maae McGrigor was ordered to Walcheren, where the British camping-grounds were underwater and three thousand men down with malarial fever. He. was wrecked in H.M.S. Venerable, 74 guns, at the mouth of the Scheldt, and after long delay was rescued with others, in a state of great exhaustion, by the boats of the fleet from Flushing. Sir Eyre Coote the younger [q. v.], who had succeeded to the command, testified to the important services rendered by McGrigor, who was himself stricken with the fever. McGrigor was promoted to the rank of inspector-general of hospitals 25 Aug. 1809. After his return he resumed his duties at Portsmouth, and married. On 13 June 1811 he received the sinecure post of physician of Portsmouth garrison, and soon afterwards was appointed chief of the medical ​ staff of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. He arrived at Lisbon 10 Jan. 1812, and was present with the army throughout the subsequent campaigns from Ciudad Rodrigo to Toulouse, including the siege of Badajoz, the terrible Burgos retreat, and the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, and Toulouse. On his representations, the services of the medical officers in action at Badajoz were for the first time publicly acknowledged in the despatches. Napier adduces the following striking proof of the success with which the medical concerns of the army were carried out under McGrigor's direction : 'During the ten months from the siege of Burgos to the battle of Vittoria the total number of sick and wounded which passed through the hospitals was 95,348. By the unremitting attention of Sir James McGrigor and the medical staff under his orders, the army took the field preparatory to the battle with a sick list under five thousand. For twenty successive days it marched towards the enemy, and, in less than one month after it had defeated him, mustered, within thirty men, as strong as before; and this, too, without reinforcements from England, the ranks having been recruited by convalescents ' (Peninsular War, revised ed. vol. iv.) McGrigor's administrative ability, and the courage and self-reliance which enabled him to accept jyrave responsibility at critical moments, speedily won the confidence of Wellington, who repeatedly expressed approval of his arrangements (cf. Gurwood, v. 582,701, vi. 95). At the end of the war Wellington again declared his perfect satisfaction with McGrigor and the department under his direction — 'He is one of the most industrious, able, and successful public servants I have ever met with' (ib. vii. 648).
After the peace of 1814 McGrigor returned home, was knighted, and retired on an allowance of 3l. a day. The medical officers who had served under him presented him with a' service of plate valued at a thousand guineas. He applied himself anew to his favourite subjects, anatomy and chemistry ; but 13 June 1815 was appointed director-general of the army medical department, and held the post until 1851. The salary was 2,000l. a year, with the relative rank of major-general. McGrigor founded the Museum of Natural History and Pathological Anatomy, and the library at Fort Pitt, Chatham, since removed to Netley Hospital. He inaugurated a system of medical reports and returns from all military stations, which, twenty years later, formed the basis of the 'Statistical Returns of the Health of the Army,' now perpetuated in the annual blue-books of the army medical department. While thus endeavouring to further the ends of science through the medium of his department, he was not unmindful of the personal interests of the officers composing it. In 1816 he started the Army Medical Friendly Society, for the relief of widows of army medical officers, and in 1820 the Army Medical Benevolent Society, for assisting the orphans of medical officers, both of which have proved most successful. The thirty-five years that he was at the head of the department were a period of peace and rigid retrenchment ; but the issue of revised regulations for the medical service, some improvements in the position of medical officers, and greater attention to the selection of men for foreign service, and in preventing overwork in the case of young and immature soldiers, were among the useful measures carried into effect. He retired on a pension at the beginning of 1851. He died at his residence in London, 2 April 1858, aged 87. McGrigor was elected F.R.S. on 14 March 1816. He received the freedom of the cities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The university of Edinburgh made him an honorary LL.D. ; Marischal College and University, now part of the university of Aberdeen, chose him rector in 1826, 1827, and 1841. He was created a baronet of the United Kingdom in September 1830. He was a fellow of the Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh, honorary physician to the queen, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a member of the council of the university of London, and of many learned societies at home and abroad. He was made a K.C.B. 17 Aug. 1850. He had also the Turkish order of the Crescent, the commander's cross of the Portuguese Tower and Sword, and the war medal with five clasps.
McGrigor was author of a 'Memoir on the Health of the 88th and other Regiments, from June 1800 to May 1801,' presented to the Bombay Medical Society in 1801 ; 'Medical Sketches of the Expedition to Egypt from India,' London, 1804; 'A Letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry,' London, 1805 — this was a reply to animadversions on the '5th Report of the Commissioners of Military Enquiry,' which had been published by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft, M.I), [q. v.]; a memoir on the fever that appearea in the British army after the return from Corunna, in 'Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,' vol. vi. 1810; a 'Memoir on the Health of the Army in the Peninsula,' in 'Transactions i of the Medico-Chirurgical Society,' London, vol. vi. ; also ' Report of Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding in the Army in the West Indies,' 1838, and a like report for the United ​Kingdom, Mediterranean, and British North America in 1889.
McGrigor married, 23 June 1810, Mary, youngest daughter of Duncan Grant of Lingeistone, Morayshire—sister of his old friend Lewis Grant (afterwards Sir Lewis Grant, M.D.), of Brigadier-general Colquhoun Grant (1780-1829) [q. v.}, and of Colonel Alexander Grant, C.B., Madras army—by whom he had three sons and one daughter.
Among the many portraits of McGrigor, one by Sir David Wilkie is in the officers' mess at Netley Hospital, and another by William Dyce, R.A., is in the hall of Marischal College. A memorial in the college quadrangle is 'erected near the place of his education and the scenes of his youth.'
[An autobiography of Sir James McGrigor, bart., coming down to 1815 only, with a portrait, and an appendix of additional information from family sources, was published in 1861. This has been here supplemented by information furnished by the registrar of Aberdeen University. Two letters to Dr. Baxter in 1816 are in Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 20117 f. 16, 20214 f. 46. See also Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen, vol. iii.; Burke's Baronetage; Gurwood's Wellington Desp. vols. v. vi. vii. and viii. (Index); Wellington Supplementary Desp. and Corresp.; Gent. Mag. 1858, pt. i. p. 553; obituary notices in Roy. Soc. Abstracts Proc. 1858-9, vol. ix., and in the different medical journals for 1858; 'Our Services under the Crown,' by Surgeon-major Gore, in Colburn's United Service Mag. June to July 1878.]
H. M. C.