42
Bath. His literary and civic distinctions were also
numerous. He was appointed a member of council
in the London university; he was a fellow of the
Royal Society of London, and a member of various
societies of Dublin and Edinburgh, and of several
societies on the Continent. He was elected by his
alma mater, the Marischal College of Aberdeen,
its rector in 1826 and 1827, and again in 1841. It
was there also that he was one of the founders of the
Medico-Chirurgical Society of Aberdeen. In 1826
he was honoured with the freedom of the city of
Edinburgh, in the university of which he had been
a student.
To the last Sir James M'Grigor was an indefatig-
able labourer in his duties as medical director-
general. He rose at an early hour in the morning,
and after transacting much of its business at home
in the form of correspondence, &c., he repaired at
ten o'clock in the morning to his office, and there
was busily employed until five in the afternoon.
Such an amount of labour he did not feel too much
in attending to the health of our troops in so many
near and distant stations over half the world. Thus
he had continued his director-generalship for thirty-
three years, until feeling in 1848, when he had
reached the peaceful age of seventy-seven years,
that longing for rest and retirement to which the
most active are at last reduced, he expressed to the
Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, his
wish to retire from office. But the "iron duke,"
who was the senior of Sir James by two years, and
who regarded him as an iron doctor, answered, "No,
no, M'Grigor; there is plenty of work in you yet."
It was a characteristic reply from the energetic old
soldier, who was still ready for the field should his
country require it. He could not also endure the
thought that the man whom he valued so highly,
and who had contributed so greatly to his victories,
should now be lost to the army, and at his remon-
strance Sir James continued in office two years longer.
But at the close of 1850 he was compelled to tender
his final resignation, which was reluctantly acquiesced
in at the Horse Guards, with many professions of
sorrow and attestations of his valuable services; and
when he retired from office in the spring of 1851,
the officers of his own department resolved to ex-
press their esteem by presenting him with a costly
testimonial. But this he intimated that he could
not accept after their former munificent token, and
accordingly they presented, instead of it, a valedic-
tory address signed by upwards of five hundred
members. After this a tranquil old age succeeded,
which only terminated on the 2d of April, 1858, when
he had nearly completed the eighty-eighth year of
his age.
It is evident from the nature of his active life, spent
in so many climates, that Sir James M 'Grigor could
have little of what is called learned leisure for in-
dulgence in authorship, and he slightly alludes in
his autobiography to the Medical Sketches of the
Expedition from India to Egypt, which he published
a short time before he joined the Blues. The con-
tinuator of his biography, however, mentions the fol-
lowing productions as having also proceeded from
his pen:—Memoir on the State of Health of the 88th
Regiment and of the Corps attached to it, from June,
1800, to May, 1801. Presented to the Bombay Med-
ical Board, 1801.—A letter in reply to Dr. Bancroft
who had published Some Strictures on the Fifth Re-
port of the Commissioners of Military Inquiry. \ 808.
—In 1810 he published in the sixth volume of the
Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal some valu-
able information on the fever which appeared in the
army on its return from Spain to England in 1809.—
"Statistical Reports on the Sickness, Mortality, and
Invaliding among the Troops in the West Indies; pre-
pared from the Records of the Boards of the Army
Medical Department and War Office Returns." Folio,
1838.—Statistical Reports on the Sickness, Mortality,
and Invaliding among the Troops in the United King-
dom, the Mediterranean, and British America. Folio,
1839.—" Sketch of the Medical History of the British
Armies in the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal dur-
ing those Campaigns." This important and interest-
ing publication was a paper which appeared in the
sixth volume of the Medico-Chirtirgical Transac-
tions.
MACINTOSH, CHARLES, F.R.S., an inventor
of several chemical manufactures, was born at Glas-
gow, December 29, 1766. He was the son of Mr.
George Macintosh, who introduced the manufacture
of cudbear and Turkey-red dyeing into Glasgow.
His mother was the daughter of the Rev. Charles
Moore of Stirling, the brother of Dr. John Moore,
author of Zehico, and her nephew was Lieutenant-
general Sir John Moore, K.B., who fell in the disas-
trous retreat at Corunna. Charles received the ele-
ments of his education in his native city, and after-
wards was sent to a school at Catterick Bridge, in
Yorkshire. On his leaving the latter he was placed
in the counting-house of Mr. Glassford of Dugald-
ston, to acquire habits of business. He studied
chemistry under the celebrated Dr. Black, then
settled in Edinburgh, and turned his knowledge to
practical account at an early period, having embarked
in the manufacture of sal-ammoniac before he had
attained the age of twenty. He subsequently intro-
duced from Holland into this country the manufac-
ture of acetate of lead and acetate of alumina, em-
ployed in calico-printing. In 1797 he was associated
with Mr. Charles Tennant, then a bleacher at Darn-
ley near Glasgow, in working the patent for the
production of chloride of lime in the dry state and in
solution, since employed so extensively as a bleach-
ing agent. In the same year he became a partner
in a firm at Hurlet for the manufacture of alum from
alum-schist; and in 1805 similar works, on a larger
scale, were established by the same company at
Campsie. On the death of his father in 1807, Mr.
Macintosh took possession, with his family, of the
house at Dunchattan, near Glasgow (but now in
Glasgow), where he continued till the end of his life
to prosecute his chemical researches. In 1822 he
obtained a patent for his celebrated invention of the
waterproof cloth distinguished by his name. With
a view to the obtaining of ammonia to be em-
ployed in the manufacture of cudbear, Mr. Mac-
intosh in 1819 entered into a contract with the
proprietors of the Glasgow gas-works, to receive
the tar and other ammoniacal products of the dis-
tillation of coal in gas-making. After separating
the ammonia, in converting the tar into pitch, the
essential oil named naphtha is produced; and it
occurred to the inventive mind of Mr. Macintosh
to turn this substance to account as a solvent of
caoutchouc or india-rubber. He succeeded in pro-
ducing a waterproof varnish, the thickness and con-
sistency of which he could vary, according to the
quantity of naphtha employed in the process. Hav-
ing obtained a patent for this process, he estab-
lished a manufactory of waterproof articles, which
was first carried on in Glasgow, but was eventually
transferred to a partnership in Manchester, under the
name of Charles Macintosh & Co. In 1828 Mr.
Macintosh joined a copartnery in working the hot-
blast patent of Mr. J. B. Neilson. He first estab-
lished in Scotland the manufacture of Prussian blue