Charles Alston (botanist)

Charles Alston (born October 24, 1685 in Eddlewood , Hamilton , Lanarkshire , † November 22, 1760 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish medic and botanist .

Life

On the advice of Anne Hamilton, 3rd Duchess of Hamilton Charles Alston should jurisprudence study. However, he chose medicine and botany. In 1715 Alston went to Leiden University to attend the lectures of Hermann Boerhaave . There he met the Scottish doctor Alexander Monro I know. On his return to Scotland, Alston Regius became Professor of Materia Medica and Botany for Materia Medica and Botany in Edinburgh and also Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh . He was a critic of Linnaeus' system of classifying plants.

On the Canongate Kirk Yard in Edinburgh he found his final resting place.

Honor taxon

The plant genus Alstonia from the dog venom family was named after him.

Fonts

• Index plantarum, præcipue officinalium, quæ, in horto medico edinburgensi. A. Murray & J. Cochran, 1740 ( online ).
• Index of the Plants in the Edinburgh Garden. 1740.
• Tyrocinium Botanicum Edinburgense. 1753 ( online ).

literature

• DE Allen: Alston, Charles (1685-1760) In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2004 ( doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 425 ).
• “Alston, the Laborious Alston” - Charles Alston as Boerhaave's True Protégé in Edinburgh . In: Eric Grier Casteel: Entrepot and backwater: A cultural history of the transfer of medical knowledge from Leiden to Edinburgh, 1690-1740 . University of California, Los Angeles 2007, pp. 249-284 (PDF) .

Web links

• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica / Alston, Charles
• Alston Charles (1683–1760), scientific writer ( Memento of July 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ D. Doyle: Edinburgh doctors and their physic gardens . In: The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh . Volume 38, Number 4, 2008, pp. 361-367 (PDF; 450 kB) .