John Smith (1825-1910)
HC.AS.15
John Smith (1825-1910), Fellow 1861, President 1883–1885
Oil on canvas, date unknown, by James Maclaren Barclay (1811-1886)
John Smith was the son of a dentist. He was born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh Institution, later called Melville College, Edinburgh University and the Royal College of Surgeons. After graduating he went to London and Paris where, during four days of street fighting which was to lead to the formation of the Second Republic, he saw and made accurate drawings of gun-shot and sabre wounds.
Occasional lectures on subjects connected with teeth had been given by James Rae and John Goodsir but John Smith gave the first regular course on the physiology and diseases of the teeth in 1856. He was surgeon dentist to the Royal Public Dispensary and, in 1860, along with his close friend Francis Imlach and others, he started the Edinburgh Dental Dispensary. The staff of this Dispensary approached the Royal College of Surgeons in 1877 and asked them to establish a Diploma in Dental Surgery. This was instituted in the following year, the same year as the Edinburgh Dental Hospital and School were established.
In 1859 he founded what was to become the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and he wrote the book which was published to celebrate the Quatercentenary of the Royal College in 1905.
Nineteeth Century
