Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson was born in Edinburgh in 1837. He pursued a career in ophthalmic surgery which had hitherto been practised by general surgeons of whom his father, John Argyll Robertson was one. In his twenties he instilled an extract of Calabar bean in his own eye and recorded the effects, which were of miosis. Shortly after this he described the abnormal pupil reaction in cases of spinal disease which won him world renown. He was the first lecturer in ophthalmology to be appointed by Edinburgh University and became an internationally known figure in his speciality.
Taught at Edinburgh University, Prague and by Albrecht von Graefe in Berlin he returned to work at the Edinburgh Eye Dispensary the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in Infirmary Street and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. Robert Christison, Professor of Materia Medica had described the systemic effects of chewing a fragment of Calabar bean, used for judicial execution in Eastern Nigeria, and Dr Thomas R. Fraser, later knighted, who isolated the active principal, drew Argyll Robertson’s attention to its meiotic properties. In the company of two colleagues he instilled an extract first in his left eye, and later at a higher concentration into both eyes, as a result of which he recommended the alkaloid physostigmine for reversing the action of Atropine, used in fundoscopy since Helmholtz’s introduction of the ophthalmoscope in 1851. Physostigmine was only later used in the treatment of glaucoma.
Professor Hughes Bennett appointed him as the first demonstrator in Practical Physiology in the country.
Having been admitted a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons he became a Fellow in 1862 and later an examiner in ophthalmology. He graduated M.D. at St Andrews University in 1857 after three days of examination. He published a paper entitled “Eye symptoms in spinal disease” which described his eponymous pupil signs. Later that year he published more extensively citing four cases, including his earlier one remarking that “I could not observe any contraction of either pupil under the influence of light, but on accommodating the eyes for a near object, both pupils contracted”. The connection with neurosyphilis was not established until 1881, but in the absence of laboratory evidence the diagnosis rested on physical signs.
Among his fifty published communications he described the operation of trephining the sclera in the treatment of glaucoma and an operation for ectropion. He was deft in the operating theatre, being ambidextrous and myopic in the left eye, which enabled him to operate without spectacles. He had the habit of placing the operating knife between his lips during an operation thus freeing his hands.
He benefited from an imposing personality and strikingly handsome appearance. He would order the excessive smoker to throw away his pipe and give his tobacco to his bitterest enemy. He advised one parent to “put the bread poultices in the child’s stomach, never in the eye again unless ordered by a doctor”.
Although not a great public speaker or lecturer, he was an outstanding teacher at Surgeon’s Hall, and his voluntary classes in the University were well attended as were his Sunday cliniques at the Royal Infirmary. Two volumes of notes taken at his lectures are held in the archives of the College.
His honours included Surgeon Oculist in Scotland to Queen Victoria, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, President of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom and of the International Council for Ophthalmology, President of the section of ophthalmology of the British Medical Association, member of the Ophthalmological Society of Heidelberg, Corresponding Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, Foreign Associate of the Society of Practising Physicians of Prague and Honorary Member of the Neurological Society of New York. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws of Edinburgh University.
He oversaw the transfer of the Department of Ophthalmology to the Royal Infirmary in Lauriston Place and after only a few years reported that the accommodation was inadequate.
Early in his career he was selected to perform an operation for squint on a young girl, the onlooker, who was the father, deciding that a man who had such a steady hand and eye under such stress was the best man to do so, requiring nerve, steadiness and surety of hand. He excelled at golf, competing at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers with success, and was a skilled curler, angler, and billiards player. He was also an active member of the Royal Company of Archers. He founded the Royal Colleges Golf Club, open to members of the colleges of physicians and surgeons of Edinburgh, was the first Captain, and presented a handsome gold medal for annual competition, winning it twice himself. He was also an art connoisseur, being an adjudicator for the Royal Scottish Academy.
Suffering from chronic respiratory disease in later life he retired to Jersey in 1904, and it was from there that he travelled to India to visit the Thakur of Gondal, whom he had befriended while he studied to become a physician in Edinburgh. He had intended to proceed to Burma but took ill and died in Gondal in 1909. Unusually for a ruler, his host wore mourning and lit the funeral pyre when he was cremated on the banks of the river Gondli at a ceremony conducted by an Irish missionary.
