George Harley

George Harley (12 February 1829 – 27 October 1896) was a Scottish physician.

Life

The only son of George Barclay Harley and Margaret Macbeath, he was born at Harley House, Haddington, in East Lothian, on 12 February 1829. His father was 63 at the time of his birth, and died soon afterwards; and he was brought up by his mother and maternal grandmother. He received his early education at the Haddington burgh schools, and at the Hill Street Institution, Edinburgh. He then went to the University of Edinburgh, where he matriculated at the age of 17, and graduated M.D. in August 1850.

After acting for fifteen months as house surgeon and resident physician to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Harley spent two years in Paris, working in the physiological and chemical laboratories of Charles Dollfus, François Verdeil, and Charles Adolph Wurtz. He next worked in the physiological laboratory of the College de France, at first under François Magendie and then under Claude Bernard, whose publications on the influence of the liver in the production of diabetes led Harley to undertake further work. During his two years' residence in Paris he was preoccupied with physiological researches, and in 1853 he was elected annual president of the Parisian Medical Society. in 1863 he published Jaundice, its Pathology and Treatment; this he eventually replaced in 1883 by his book on Diseases of the Liver,; it was reprinted in Canada and in America, and was translated into German by Dr. J. Kraus of Carlsbad. In 1885 he published a pamphlet on Sounding for Gall Stones, and in the following year a work on Inflammation of the Liver, in which he advocated puncture of the capsule in congestive liver induration, and 'hepatic phlebotomy' for acute hepatitis. In 1868 his old pupil, George T. Brown, brought out a book on Histology, of demonstrations which Harley had given at University College. The second edition of the book Dr. Harley edited himself. Ethel Brilliana Tweedie (Mrs. Alec Tweedie), the author; and Olga Harley.