Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Robertson, Robert
ROBERTSON, ROBERT, M.D. (1742–1829), physician, was born in Scotland in 1742. On completing his medical apprenticeship he obtained employment as a surgeon on a whaling ship, sailed from Dundee, and spent four months on the coast of Greenland. In September 1760 he entered the royal navy as a surgeon's mate, and served in January 1761 on board the Prince of Orange at the reduction of Belleisle. In 1763 he served in the Terpsichore off the coasts of Portugal, Newfoundland, and Ireland; and from July 1764 spent two years on the Cornwall guardship at Plymouth, proceeding in 1766 to the West Indies. There in 1768 he was appointed surgeon to the Diligence sloop, which returned to England in April 1769, and was paid off. He next served in the Weasel on the west coast of Africa, and till 1775 remained there or in the West Indies. He was afterwards on the North American station till 1791, and during the whole thirty years kept records of cases of interest, including many varieties of fever, of dysentery, and of scurvy. He warmly supported the views on scurvy of James Lind (1716–1794) [q. v.], whom he knew. On 12 Feb. 1779 he was created M.D. in the university of Aberdeen. In 1793 he became physician to Greenwich Hospital, and on 25 June 1793 was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London. He published in 1779 ‘A Physical Journal kept on Board H. M. Ship Rainbow,’ in 1789 ‘Observations on Jail, Hospital, or Ship Fever,’ and in 1790 ‘An Essay on Fevers.’ The chief results obtained in these works were re-embodied in four volumes published by him in 1807 under the title ‘Observations on the Diseases incident to Seamen,’ and in two others entitled ‘Synopsis Morborum’ in 1810. His works contain some interesting cases, but in the effort to generalise he often becomes obscure, and his chief merit lies in his industry in collecting notes. He was elected F.R.S. on 31 May 1804. He died at Greenwich in the autumn of 1829.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 426; Works, Gent. Mag. 1829, ii. 561; Thomson's Hist. of Royal Society, 1812.]