John Moultrie (1729-1798)
John Moultrie (1729-1798) was the first US-born graduate of Edinburgh University, qualifying M.D in 1749.
He was born in South Carolina to a Scottish father, John Moultrie (1702-1771), himself a graduate of Edinburgh University, who was both a general practitioner and an indigo planter.
Moultrie arrived in Edinburgh after a perilous 32-day voyage, towards the end of which his ship was chased and almost captured by a Spanish vessel,
He studied Anatomy under Alexander Monro ''primus'' (1697-1767) and the Institutes of Medicine and Practice of Physic under John Rutherford (1695-1779) and Andrew Sinclair (c1698-1760), and Theory of Medicine under Robert Whytt (1714-1766). He was among the first students to benefit when Rutherford introduced clinical lectures into the curriculum in 1748.
Moutrie graduated in 1749 with a thesis on yellow fever: 'De Febre maligna biliosa Americae'. His name appears on the printed roll as 'Joannes Moultrie, ex Carolina Meridionali provincia'. Moutrie's thesis was soon recognized as the most authoritative study of yellow fever to date and a study for which there was a pressing need. Known as the 'the Terror of the South', yellow fever ravaged the Atlantic Coast for over a century. Moultrie himself had already survived three epidemics of yellow fever before travelling to Edinburgh. A further edition of Moultrie's thesis was published in Langensalza, Germany, in 1768, and it was subsequently translated into French and German.
On his return to the United States, Moultrie practised his profession in Charleston, and became a major planter and slave-owner. He played an active role in the legal, political, and military life of the province. In 1756, he was appointed Justice of the Peace. In 1750, he was elected representative of St. James, Goose Creek, in the General Assembly of South Carolina. In 1761 he participated as a major of militia in the First Cherokee War.
When Florida became a British province following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Moultrie took up land grants there, developing sugar, indigo, and rice plantations, and building a stone mansion for himself four miles south of St. Augustine. Meanwhile he rose to become Lieutenant-Governor of East Florida in which role he oversaw an extensive programme of road-building.
He fought on the the British side during the American War of Independence which pitted him against his brothers Thomas and William, both patriots. When Florida was returned to Spain following the defeat of the British forces, Moutrie lost much of his property. He went into exile in England, settling in Shifnal, Shropshire, where he died in 1798.
Moultrie was the first of 117 American students to graduate from Edinburgh's Medical School by the end of the eighteenth century. These included his second son James Moultrie (1766-1813), the third generation of Moultries to qualify M.D. at Edinburgh.
Sources
- John Z. Bowers, 'The Influence of Edinburgh on American Medicine', in Medical Education and Medical Care: A Scottish-American Symposium, ed. Gordon McLachlan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 1-23.
- 'Letters from a Colonial Student of Medicine in Edinburgh to his Parents in South Carolina, 1746-1749', University of Edinburgh Journal, 4 (1930-31), 270-74.
- J. B. Morrell, 'Medicine and Science in the Eighteenth Century', in Four Centuries: Edinburgh University Life, 1583-1983, ed. Gordon Donaldson (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1983), pp. 38-52.
- Eleanor Winthrop Townsend, 'John Moultrie, Junior, M.D., 1729-1798, Royal Lieutenant-Governor of East Florida', Annals of Medical History, 3rd Ser., II (1940), 98-109.