George Harley

George Harley (12 February 1829 – 27 October 1896) was a Scottish physician.

The only son of George Barclay Harley and Margaret Macbeath, he was born at Harley House, Haddington, in East Lothian, on 12 February 1829. His father was 63 at the time of his birth, and died soon afterwards; and he was brought up by his mother and maternal grandmother. He received his early education at the Haddington burgh schools, and at the Hill Street Institution, Edinburgh. He then went to the University of Edinburgh, where he matriculated at the age of 17, and graduated M.D. in August 1850.

After acting for fifteen months as house surgeon and resident physician to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Harley spent two years in Paris, working in the physiological and chemical laboratories of Charles Dollfus, François Verdeil, and Charles Adolph Wurtz. He next worked in the physiological laboratory of the College de France, at first under François Magendie and then under Claude Bernard, whose publications on the influence of the liver in the production of diabetes led Harley to undertake further work. During his two years' residence in Paris he was preoccupied with physiological researches, and in 1853 he was elected annual president of the Parisian Medical Society.

Harley then spent two years in Germany at the universities of Würzburg (under Rudolf Virchow), Giessen (under Justus Liebig), Berlin, Vienna, and Heidelberg. When he was studying in Vienna, during the height of the Crimean War, he attempted to join the army of Omar Pasha as a civil surgeon, but passport issues meant he was arrested instead.

In 1855 Harley was appointed lecturer on practical physiology and histology at University College London; and was also made curator of its anatomical museum. In 1856 he started private practice in Nottingham Place. In 1858 he was elected a fellow of the Chemical Society, and fellow of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1859 he became professor of medical jurisprudence at University College in the place of William Benjamin Carpenter, and in 1860 physician to the hospital. These appointments he held till eye trouble obliged him to resign them. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1865, at the age of 36. In 1864 he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London; he afterwards held the post of examiner in anatomy and physiology in the college. He also became corresponding member of numerous foreign scientific societies. He assisted in founding the British Institute of Preventive Medicine.

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