Alexander Small

Alexander Small (1710 – 31 August 1794) was a Scottish surgeon and scholar, and a friend and frequent correspondent of Benjamin Franklin.

Dr. Alexander Small was born c. 1710 in Perthshire, Scotland, the oldest son of Patrick Small of Leanoch and Magdalen Robertson of Straloch. Small and his father were members of the Smalls of Dirnanean.

Although it is not known where Alexander Small received his medical training, he served in the British army as a Field Assistance Surgeon (F.A.S). By 1733 he was serving as a surgeon for the British Royal Artillery in Minorca.

In 1736 Small arrived in London and began practising as a private surgeon. His obituary indicates his arrival in London coincided with the celebratory arrival of Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha just prior to her marriage to Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Around 1777 Dr. Small authored an essay on the importance to patient recovery and disease control of having good hospital ventilation. Benjamin Franklin may have assisted in the editing of the paper. The essay was eventually presented in Edinburgh and France.

In 1783, an elderly Dr. Small was working with Charles Spalding on his designs for an improved diving bell, when Spalding drowned in the Irish Sea diving in a bell of his design. Charles Spalding was married to Dr. Small's niece, Susan Small, the daughter of his brother James Small of Kinloch Rannoch.

Dr. Small and Benjamin Franklin were correspondents for at least thirty years, likely until Franklin's death. Franklin referred to them as "philosophers, who study and converse for the benefit of mankind."

Alexander Small and Benjamin Franklin corresponded frequently, on topics as varied as agriculture, horticulture, apiculture, hospital ventilation, pickling sturgeon, new ways of uprooting trees, poor interest rates, and politics.

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