George Kellie

Dr George Kellie (1720–1779) was a Scottish surgeon who, together with Alexander Monro secundus gave his name to the Monro-Kellie doctrine, a concept which relates intracranial pressure to the volume of intracranial contents and is a basic tenet of our understanding of the neuropathology of raised intracranial pressure. The doctrine states that since the skull is incompressible, and the volume inside the skull is fixed then any increase in volume of one of the cranial constituents must be compensated by a decrease in volume of another. Previous research about George Kellie (1720–1779) may have been hampered by a widely cited incorrect year of birth, by the spelling of his name as Kellie or Kelly and by confusion with his father, also a surgeon in Leith, with the same name and subject to similar spelling variations.

George Kellie was born in Leith, the seaport for Edinburgh which was at that time the fifth largest town in Scotland. His parents George Kellie (1742–1805), originally from Dunbar, East Lothian, and Catherin [sic] McCall of Haddington, East Lothian had married in South Leith in August 1769 On his baptismal entry in the parish of Dunbar, East Lothian for 6 October 1742 George senior's surname is spelt Kellie, as is that of his father. In the South Leith parish records of his marriage to Catherin McCall in August 1764 and the record of the birth of his son, the spelling is given as 'Kelly'. George Kellie senior practised as a surgeon and while there is no record of his registration as a surgical apprentice in Wallis's extensive listing of British medical and surgical apprentices that listing showed that he trained three apprentices between 1771–75. The Street directories for Edinburgh and Leith for the years 1773–1805 show that ‘George Kelly’ senior practised as a surgeon in Tolbooth Wynd, Leith, the only Kelly or Kellie listed in Leith for that period. In 1774 he published a paper describing a case of extensive surgical emphysema which, after consulting with Alexander Monro secundus, he had successfully treated by inserting of a cannula into the thoracic cavity. George Kelly senior died at Leith on 3 April 1805, the spelling of his name on the death notice reverting to 'Kellie'. George Kellie junior followed his father into a career as a surgeon in Leith after serving a five year apprenticeship to the Edinburgh surgeon James Arrott (1760–1818).

As Arrott had done before him Kellie joined the Royal Navy in 1790 as a surgeon. During this naval service he published papers in the form of letters to his father ‘Mr Kellie, surgeon, Leith’. A letter to Edinburgh Medical Commentaries dated show of 21 May 1794s that he is now surgeon on HMS Iris, a 32 gun, fifth rate frigate. In this letter he records experiments on himself, describing the effects of compressing the arm by tourniquet. In August 1796 he was posted to HMS Leopard, a 50 gun fourth rate warship. In the next month he writes to the Annals of Medicine about the anatomy of the shark and the following year writes with more information about tourniquet compression. In a letter to the Annals in 1801 from a Mr Livingstone, Kellie is described as ‘physician to the English prisoners at Valencienne’, a reference to the town in the Pas de Calais in northern France where British prisoners of war were held during the Napoleonic War.

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