Francis Home (1719-1813)

Francis Home was born on 17 November 1719. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University. Between 1742 and 1748 he served as a military surgeon in Flanders during the Seven Years War. During intervals between campaigns he studied at the University of Leiden. After his service in the army he graduated from Edinburgh University in 1750 with degree of MD. Home's thesis was on intermittent fever, 'Dissertatio de febre intermittente'. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. After practising medicine for some years in the city, he was appointed as Professor of Materia Medica at Edinburgh University in 1768. It was Home who first called attention to croup as a distinct disease. His publications include Experiments on bleaching (1756), Principia medicinae (1758), Medical facts and experiments (1759), An inquiry into the nature, cause, and cure of the croup (1765), and Clinical experiments, histories, and dissections (1780). In 1757 he was awarded a gold medal for an essay on the principles of agriculture, The principles of agriculture and vegetation. Home held his Chair until 1798. Professor Francis Home died on 15 February 1813.