Patrick Small Keir Newbigging

Many important medical discoveries have been made by medical students. In Edinburgh, the Royal Medical Society for centuries has provided a fertile forum for student debate, discussion and presentation of new ideas. Patrick Newbigging’s observations on the nature of the heart sounds and the apex beat certainly contributed significantly to the ongoing debate of the time. Unusually for a physician in private practice, such was his prestige and popularity that he was elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1861. With tragic irony, he died three years later of cardiac valvular disease.

Patrick Newbigging was born in Edinburgh, the son of Sir William Newbigging, President of the College from 1814-1816. Sir William was able to combine surgical practice with a large general practice which his son would eventually inherit.

While still a medical student at Edinburgh, Patrick Newbigging joined the Royal Medical Society, the oldest student society in the English speaking world. In the middle of the 19th century it offered an opportunity for medical undergraduates and graduates to present research work and novel ideas, and provided a forum for debate, and discussion. It was the practice to give dissertations on original observations and research. Amongst those who gave dissertations in this way were Bright, Syme, Liston, Sharpey, Allen Thomson and J Y Simpson. Newbigging gave his dissertation in 1833 on the elucidation of heart sounds. He came to the significant conclusion that the apex beat was produced by ventricular systole and not diastole as Stokes and Corrigan had suggested and which was the prevalent view in the debate of the time. Newbigging went on to become President of the Royal Medical Society. His MD was written on the same topic and after graduation he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1834. He established himself in general practice in Edinburgh, becoming a medical officer in the New Town Dispensary. After a tour of medical centres in Europe where he had promoted his ideas on auscultation, he translated the “Practical Treaties in Auscultation” written by Barth and Roger. On his father’s death in 1852 he inherited the practice and proved to be a popular, conscientious physician. His writings cover a wide range of topics from the therapeutic action of croton oil in nervous disorders, to the non-mercurial treatment of venereal disease, and scarlet fever. In 1861, he was elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and President of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts. Ironically he was to die, aged 50, from cardiac valvular disease.