ARI plaque to Alexander Harvey, Professor of Materia Medica
Alexander Harvey was the son of Robert Harvey, one of the founders of the Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, and the grandson of Alexander Gordon. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA from Marischal College. He studied medicine in Dublin, Paris, London and Edinburgh, gaining an MD from Edinburgh in 1835. In 1839 he became Lecturer in the Institutes of Medicine (physiology) at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and then Professor of the Practice of Medicine at Kings College, Aberdeen. He left these posts in 1852 and practised medicine in Southampton for a number of years. He returned to Aberdeen in 1860 as the first Professor of Materia Medica at the United Universities of Aberdeen and consulting physician to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. He was not an inspiring lecturer and repeated the same lectures year after year word for word, to the extent that students would chime in with a mimicking chorus when he came to a familiar passage, which he apparently took with good humour. He was President of the Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1864-5. Ill health forced his retirement from medical practice in 1878 and he died in London in 1889. His bust is in the Medico-Chirurgical Society premises.
