Notable South Australians/Archibald Watson, M.D., F.R.C.S., Eng.
Archibald Watson, M.D., F.R.C.S., Eng.,
PROFESSOR of Anatomy at the Adelaide University, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (exam.), Doctor of Medicine of the Faculties of Paris and Goettingen, Corresponding Member of the Anthropological, Clinical, and Anatomical Societies of Paris, Australian Editor of the International Journal of Anatomy and Physiology; Pathologist to the South Australian Government and the Adelaide Hospital. He is the eldest son of Mr. Sydney Grandison Watson, of Tintaldra, Upper Murray, Victoria,and was born in Riverina in 1849. Dr. Watson received the principal part of his education at the Scotch College, Melbourne, under Dr. Morrison, where he invariably carried off all the Scriptural prizes, obtaining also in one year the first prize for Gymnastics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Natural History. Charing Cross Medical School, likewise the mater gloriosa of Professor Huxley, President of the Royal Society, was that also of Dr. Watson, who dates his love of anatomy to the viva vox of his former teacher. Dr. James Cantlie, MA., etc., of Aberdeen, surgeon to Charing Cross Hospital, so-well known as a public lecturer and in connection with the Volunteer Ambulance movement in England. In London Dr. Watson enjoyed also the privilege of sitting at the feet of Sir Joseph Lister and Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, sen., F.R.S., as well as of being clinical assistant to Mr. J. W. Hulke, F.R.S., President of the Geological Society of Great Britain. The medical schools of the Continent, on account of the greater facilities they afforded for the study of operative surgery and practical anatomy, were not neglected by Dr. Watson, who spent many years of his busy life abroad, being at one time private assistant to Terrier, the leading French ovariotomist, and surgical dresser to the celebrated anthropologist, the late Professor Broca, of Paris, to whom he afterwards dedicated his Thesis. It was, however, in Goettingen (scene likewise of Bismarck's academical labours more than forty years previously) under Professors Leber and Koenig that Dr. Watson acquired a bias for German methods in the treatment of eye affections and wounds. It was there also that he came under the ægis of the greatest of living anatomists, the venerable Henle. The latter scientist strongly advocated his cause with Sir Arthur Blyth and Professors Flower and Humphry in their selection of a candidate for the Professorship at the Adelaide University. Professor Humphry presented Dr. Watson, on his nomination, with a very valuable collection of books, amongst which were several works of the Cambridge Professor himself, accompanied by his portrait. Dr. Watson knows hospital life from a patient's as well as from a surgeon's point of view, having been treated nosocomially both for bloodpoisoning and other diseases incident to his calling, necessitating interruptions in his studies and subsequent travels in Spain, Italy, Morocco, and Egypt; in the latter country he applied, along with Dr. Honman, of cholera fame, now of Williamstown, Victoria, and their mutual friend the late Dr. Leslie, for a Surgeoncy with Hicks Pacha's Soudan force, Leslie, whose heroic death became afterwards matter of Egyptian history, receiving the appointment. After the cholera epidemic of 1883, Dr. Watson, encouraged to further exertions nearer home by Mr. W. Fane De Salis, late of Sydney, returned to England, where he remained till his present appointment to the chair of Anatomy at the Adelaide University, founded by Sir Thomas Elder, who, boarding the R.M.S. Pekin in which Dr. Watson arrived, was the first to welcome him back to his native land and extend to him an Australian hospitality.