JOHN T. WILSON
THE Medical Officer for the County of Lanark was born 12th
December, 1855, at Cambuslang. His father was a native of the same place, and on
the maternal side, in common with his cousin, the Very Rev. Principal Lindsay,
D.D., Dr. Wilson can trace his ancestry from the time of the Battle of Bothwell
Bridge and earlier. He was educated at two academies in Glasgow and at the High
School, and his mother hoped to train him for the Church. Owing to his father's
ill health, however, and the loss of some of the family means, he had to help in
his father's bakery business. He joined the Bakers' Incorporation, and keeps his
burgess' ticket, and when his father died in 1876 he carried on and developed
the business for twelve years. But he had not given up the idea of professional
life, and during the later years of his business career he prepared for the
study of medicine, passed the preliminary examination of the Glasgow Faculty,
and studied anatomy at Anderson's College under Professor Buchanan and chemistry
at the Royal Infirmary School of Medicine, now St. Mungo's College. In 1888 he
retired from business and entered Aberdeen University as a second year student.
He took a very distinguished place in all his classes, winning three medals and
other prizes, and in three years obtained the degrees of M.B. and C.M. with
honours. During the winter of 1891 he studied Public Health, and in 1892
obtained the diploma with honours, and later was appointed Assistant Medical
Officer of Health in Shropshire. Previously for a time he had acted as Assistant
to Professor Hay in the Public Health Department of the University of Aberdeen
and in the Sanitary administration of the city. In 1893 he married the
Professor's sister, Miss Jeanie Buchanan, eldest daughter of Matthew Hay,
coalmaster, Slamannan. A year later he was appointed to his present position.
Since his appointment his life has been a very busy one. In
Shropshire he had been Assistant Medical Officer to the largest combination of
Sanitary Districts in England, and he has since been chief of the Public Health
Department of the most populous county in Scotland. Nevertheless he has found
time to make some valuable contributions to the literature of his profession.
While still at Aberdeen, in 1892, he read papers at the annual congress of the
Sanitary Association of Scotland on "Worm Nodules in the Lungs of Sheep" and on
"Methods of determining the amount of Organic Matter in Potable Waters." In
Shropshire he was appointed a Lecturer under the Technical Instruction Committee
of the County Council, and delivered a course of lectures on "Home Nursing and
Hygiene." And since his appointment to Lanarkshire, in addition to the bulky
Annual Reports which are required of the Medical Officer, and which reveal him
as one of the most active and progressive of Scottish Health Officers, he was
the author in 1897 of a very valuable and frequently quoted paper on the Natural
History of Scarlet Fever, which was published as a supplement to Public Health;
and in 1903 he produced an exhaustive "Report to the County Council on the
Administration of the Rivers Pollution Prevention Acts," in which the results of
much careful investigation are embodied.
Dr. Wilson was in 1908 made President of the Incorporated
Sanitary Association of Scotland, and delivered his presidential address in
Aberdeen on the subject of "Disease and Infection."
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Index of Glasgow Men (1909)