Letters relevant to the Round Table Club and referring to John Gray McKendrick, 1908

The collection is composed of two letters.

The first is dated Edinburgh, 27 June 1908, and is from 'your old friends', the 'other surviving members' of the Round Table Club, to 'Dear McKendrick'. It goes on:
'thank you very heartily for your labour of love. You bring back very vividly those happy times, and make us young again.
We are especially grateful to you for what you say of those who have got [sic] before us, and we again see and hear their friends faces and their songs and jokes, in your pages'. It is signed by, among others: Joseph Bell, Alexander Crum Brown, Francis Cadell, Thomas Richard Fraser, Arthur Gamgee, R. C. Maclagan, Claud Muirhead, Douglas Argyll Robertson, John Wyllie, and John Chiene.

The second is dated Edinburgh, 30 June [1908] and is addressed from Alva Street in the city. It is from John Chiene to 'Dear RTC's'. The letter refers to an enclosure from Crum Brown. It goes on:
'please sign and pass on until it comes back...'
'...it will be sent to J.G.M. in a gold? casket.'

Again there is a list of signatures: Joseph Bell, A. Crum Brown, J. G. Buchanan, Frank Cadell, James Carmichael, W. A. Finlay, Arthur Gamgee, William Jeffrey, R. C. Maclagan, Claud Muirhead, D. A. Robertson, John Wyllie, and John Chiene... among others.

There is also a continuation, dated 25 July 1908, from John Chiene to 'Dear Mac':
'I send this on after its wanderings. Yours ever'

John Gray McKendrick was born in Old Machar, Aberdeen on 12 August 1841 and went on to study at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh before graduating in 1864 as a MB ChB. He married Mary Souttar in 1867 and two of their children, John Souttar M'Kendrick and Anderson Gray M'Kendrick, would go on to become fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in their own right. In 1869, he became the assistant to the Professor of Physiology at the University of Edinburgh, John Hughes Bennett, pursuing his own research into the nervous system and special senses. McKendrick went on to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1873, having been proposed by Sir William Turner, serving as a councillor and eventually the vice-president from 1894 until 1900.

He took up a post at the University of Glasgow in 1873, first as an extra-mural lecturer and then as Professor of 'Theory of Physic or Institutes of Medicine' in 1876. The name of his position was changed to Professor of Physiology in 1893.

McKendrick was a founder member of the Physiological Society and was Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal Institution from 1881 to 1884. He resigned the latter post on 5 March 1884 due to ill health. In 1891 and 1895 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture.

When he retired in 1910 he became Provost of Stonehaven. John Gray McKendrick FRSE died in Glasgow on 2 January 1926.

Access should be unrestricted but please check in advance of any consultation.

Donated October 2015 by Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. Accession no: E2015.88

Catalogued by Graeme D. Eddie 8 November 2015

Also within the CRC, Special Collections is Coll-341: 'Records of the Round Table Club, Edinburgh'