While officiating for nearly fifty years as a medical teacher, Dr Gregory carried on an extensive and lucrative practice in Edinburgh. As a physician, he enjoyed the highest reputation, notwithstanding a certain severe sincerity, and
occasional brusquerie of manner, which characterized him in this capacity. It
is probable that, but for the pressure of his professional engagements, he might
have oftener employed his pen, both in the improvement of medical knowledge,
and in general literature. His only medical publication, besides his matchless
"Conspectus," was an edition of Cullen's "First Lines of the Practice of Physic," 2 vols. 8vo. It is with reluctance we advert to a series of publications of a different kind, which Dr Gregory allowed himself to issue, and which it must be the wish of every generous mind to forget as soon as possible. They
consisted of a variety of pamphlets, in which he gave vent to feelings that
could not fail to excite the indignation of various members of his own profession; the most remarkable being a memorial addressed, in 1800, to the managers of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, complaining of the younger
members of the college of surgeons being there allowed to perform operations.
A list of these productions is given in the preface to Mr John Bell's Letters
on Professional Characters and Manners, 1810, and we shall not therefore
allude further to the subject, than to say, that the language employed in several
of them affords a most striking view of one of the paradoxes occasionally found
in human character, the co-existence in the same bosom of sentiments of
chivalrous honour and benevolence, with the most inveterate hostility towards
individuals.
Dr Gregory died at his house in St Andrew's square, Edinburgh, April 2, 1821, leaving a large family, chiefly in adolescence.
GREGORY, (Dr) John, a distinguished physician of the eighteenth century, was descended from a family of illustrious men, whose names and discoveries will ever form a brilliant page in the history of the literature of Scotland. Many of the members of this family held professorships in the most distinguished universities, both in this and the southern kingdom ; and we may turn to the name of Gregory for those who raised Scotland to an equal rank with any other nation in the scientific world. John Gregory was born at Aberdeen, on the 3rd of June, 1724, being the youngest of the three children of James Gregory, professor of medicine in King's college there. This professor of medicine was a son of James Gregory, the celebrated inventor of the reflecting telescope.
When John Gregory was seven years of age, he lost his father, wherefore the charge of his education devolved upon his elder brother, James, who succeeded his father in the professorship. He acquired his knowledge of classical literature at the grammar school of Aberdeen, where he applied himself with much success to the study of the Greek and Latin languages. He completed a course of languages and philosophy, at King's college, Aberdeen, under the immediate care of principal Chalmers, his grandfather by the mother's side. He studied with great success under Mr Thomas Gordon, the professor of philosophy in that college; and, to the honour of both, a friendly correspondence was then commenced, which was maintained till the end of Gregory's life. In noticing those to whom Gregory was indebted for his early education, it would be unpardonable to pass over the name of Dr Reid, his cousin-german; the same whose "Inquiry into the Human Mind" forms so conspicuous a feature in the history of the intellectual philosophy of the eighteenth century;—and here we may remark the existence of that family spirit for mathematical reasoning, which has so long been entailed on the name of Gregory. The essay on quantity, and the chapter on the geometry of visibles, prove this eminently in Dr Reid; and
