William Cumberland Cruikshank

William Cumberland Cruikshank

William Cumberland Cruikshank (1745, Edinburgh — 27 June 1800) was a British chemist and anatomist. He was the author of The Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels of the Human Body, which was first published in 1786.^[1][2]

He went to London in 1771 and became assistant to William Hunter in his anatomical work.^[1] In 1797, he was the first to demonstrate that a particular crystallizable substance exists in the urine and is precipitated from it by nitric acid.^[3] He identified carbon monoxide as a compound containing carbon and oxygen in 1800.^[4] In 1800 he also used chlorine to purify water.^[5]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1797.^[6]

Notes and references

1. Pilcher, Lewis Stephen (1918). A List of Books by Some of the Old Masters of Medicine and Surgery, p. 132. Brooklyn, New York.
2. Quain, Jones (1892). Quain's Elements of Anatomy, Vol. II, Part II, p. 546. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
3. Coulson, William (1857). On the diseases of the bladder and prostate gland , p. 15. Churchill.
4. Roscoe, Henry E. and Schorlemmer, Carl (1920). A Treatise on Chemistry (5th ed.), p. 797. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited.
5. Rideal, Samuel (1895). Disinfection and Disinfectants, p. 59. J.B. Lippincott Co.
6. "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 26 December 2010.

Further reading

• McDonald, Stuart W. (2015). "William Cruikshank (1745-1800), anatomist and surgeon, and his illustrious patient, Samuel Johnson". Clinical Anatomy 28 (7): 836–843. doi:10.1002/ca.22567. ISSN 0897-3806.
• Rose, F Clifford (31 October 2011). History of British Neurology. World Scientific. pp. 75–77. ISBN 978-1-908977-84-7.
• "William C. Cruikshank (1745-1800) Surgeon of Leicester Square". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 214 (6): 1110. 1970. doi:10.1001/jama.1970.03180060084019. ISSN 0098-7484.