Joseph Coats

Joseph Coats (4 February 1848 – 24 January 1899) was a pathologist and emeritus professor of Pathology at the University of Glasgow. Coats wrote the first book on practical pathology, that became the bible of the profession. of Thomas Coats family in Paisley, who were famous as thread manufacturers. Coats was educated at Paisley Grammar School before matriculating at the University of Glasgow on a arts course.

Career Coat's first career position as a physician was as an assistant to William Tennant Gairdner at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. His chair not only covered physiology but several others subjects, one of which included pathology. The professor insisted that only he could lecture on pathology, leaving Coats in the unenviable position of becoming his assistant. Being an assistant meant Coats had to pay McKendrick lecture fees on a yearly basis. Coats found this both galling and irksome, as McKendrick never held a single lecture on pathology, instead focusing his time only on physiology. When Coats was finally awarded the chair after so many years, his career as professor was cut short.

Death In 1896, he started to feel pain that resulted in febrile attacks that Coats suspected of being Malaria picked up while he was in Rome. However, a year later, a tumour was discovered in his abdomen. After a visit to Australia and Egypt in 1898, his health rapidly worsened in the last months of the year and he died during the morning of 24 January 1899.