John Thomson

John Thomson FRS FRSE PRCPE (1765–1846) was a Scottish surgeon and physician, reputed in his time "the most learned physician in Scotland". He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1834 to 1836.

Early life He was born in Paisley on 15 March 1765, the son of Joseph Thomson, a silk-weaver from Kinross, and his wife Mary Millar. Worked as a boy under different masters for about three years, and at 11 he was bound apprentice to his father for seven years. At the end of his term of service his father intended him for the ministry, but was persuaded to apprentice him in 1785 to Dr. John White of Paisley, with whom he remained for three years.

Thomson entered the University of Glasgow in the winter session of 1788–9, and the following year moved to Edinburgh. He was appointed assistant apothecary at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, in September 1790, and in the following September he became house-surgeon there, title surgeon's clerk, having already filled the port of assistant physician's clerk. He became a member of the Edinburgh Medical Society at the beginning of the winter session in 1790–1, and next year was elected one of its presidents. On 31 July 1792 Thomson, in poor health, resigned his appointment and went to London, where he studied at John Hunter's school of medicine in Leicester Square.

He also gave a course of lectures on for military surgeons; and visited London in the autumn 1803 to be appointed a hospital mate in the Army, a qualification to take charge of a military hospital in case of invasion.

In summer 1814 toured medical schools in Europe. He was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on 7 February 1815: he was now acting as a consulting physician as well as a consulting surgeon. That summer he was again on the continent of Europe, and observed the treatment of the wounded after the Battle of Waterloo. outlived childhood.

He was grandfather to John Millar Thomson FRSE.