Appointed a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 1818, John Henry Wishart had a special interest in diseases of the eye and became President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Wishart came from a notable family. His great grandfather and grandfather, who were both named William Wishart, had been Principals of Edinburgh University, and it was during his great grandfather’s term of office in 1726 that the Faculty of Medicine was established. His father, William Thomas Wishart, lived at the estate of Foxhall, Kirkliston and John attended the High School of Edinburgh where he a fellow pupil was James Wardrop. There he won the Murray Medal for Latin in 1795, an honour which in 1810 was also bestowed on Robert Knox.
Wishart matriculated at Edinburgh University in 1797, aged 16. He proceeded to take his FRCSEd in 1805, and his probationary essay dedicated to Professor Russell, was entitled Ophthalmia. This referred to several types of ocular inflammation including conjunctivitis which had increased in the population as a consequence of the introduction of trachoma by soldiers returning from Egypt and Spain during the wars with Napoleon.
He had studied under the most eminent ocular surgeon of the time, Georg Josef Beer in Vienna where he was joined by his friend James Wardrop. The two young men travelled together in Hungary enduring severe cold in the early months of 1804 before he returned to Edinburgh to practise at No 5 Nicolson Square, close to where the present College building now stands. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, a literary recluse and friend of Sir Walter Scott recommended Wishart as an ophthalmic surgeon in a letter. Combining his ophthalmological interest with mainstream surgery, he translated Antonio Scarpa’s treatise on aneurysm from Italian, which he had possibly learned from a private tutor, adding additional cases and notes of his own and dedicating it to Professor John Thomson in 1808. Later he also translated Scarpa’s works on club foot and hernia, which he dedicated to James Wardrop, but a notable treatise on eye diseases by Scarpa was translated into English by James Briggs.
Wishart was elected President of the College in 1820. His presidency was marked by a letter from John Barclay in 1821 offering his large collection of specimens on condition that a suitable building was obtained to house them. This resulted in the construction of the present College building, completed in 1832, the room now used as the Hall being the home for Barclay’s collection. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he was also a member of the Royal Medical Society and the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society, and served as a Surgeon to King George IV.
He had practised in the Public Dispensary in Richmond Street, but in 1822 with the young John Argyll Robertson founded the Edinburgh Eye Dispensary in the Lawnmarket. This was the first specialist eye hospital in Scotland, and served the sick poor as well as being a place for the teaching of medical students. Wishart moved to a large house in York Place where his family grew up. His second son followed him into medicine, writing his M.D. thesis on Cataract, serving in the army and dying during the Crimean War at Scutari. His youngest son left Scotland for Australia to labour in the goldfields of Victoria where he died a bachelor.
Wishart published further papers on ophthalmia, including that occurring in neonates and that associated with gonorrhoea He also wrote on subclavian aneurysm, ventral hernia, optic nerve tumour and retinoblastoma treated by extirpation of the globe. Notably while President of the College in 1822 he published a Case of Tumours in the Skull, Dura Mater, and Brain. This is probably the first publication in English which describes Type 2 neurofibromatosis with symptoms, signs and macroscopic post-mortem appearances.
He is buried in Greyfriars’ Churchyard in Edinburgh, but no portrait of him is known to exist.
