author
Alexander Turnbull
1794–1881
A 19th-century Scottish physician and medical writer, he published books on pain treatment, eye disease, and the medicinal use of plant alkaloids at a time when those therapies were still being hotly explored. His work offers a vivid glimpse of experimental medicine in the 1830s and 1840s.
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About the author
Born in 1794 or 1795, Alexander Turnbull was a doctor whose surviving publications identify him as an M.D. and show him writing on several areas of practical medicine. Library records connect him with works on painful and nervous disorders, treatments for diseases of the eye and ear, and the medical properties of plants such as aconite and veratria.
His books suggest a physician deeply interested in remedies for severe pain and difficult chronic conditions. Among the works attributed to him are An Investigation into the Remarkable Medicinal Effects Resulting from the External Application of Veratria (1834), On the Medical Properties of the Natural Order Ranunculaceae (1838), On the Preparation and Medicinal Employment of Aconitine (1840), and Treatment of the Diseases of the Eye by Means of Prussic Acid Vapour and Other Medicinal Agents (1843, with later editions recorded).
Turnbull died in 1881. While little biographical detail was easy to confirm from reliable public sources, his medical writing has remained traceable through major library collections, where it survives as a record of an era when doctors were testing powerful new substances and searching for better ways to relieve pain and restore sight.