James Copland (physician)

James Copland (1791–1870) was a Scottish physician and prolific medical writer.

He was born in November 1791 in Orkney, the eldest of nine children. He went to school at Lerwick, and in November 1807 entered the University of Edinburgh. His studies were at first in theology, but he graduated M.D. in 1815. He went to London, but finding no work that suited him, after eighteen months, he took a post in the Gold Coast as medical officer to the settlements of the African Company.

Copland landed at Goree, and in Senegal, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone, studying the tropical diseases. On his leaving Sierra Leone, three-quarters of the ship's crew went down with fever; and a gale carried away the masts. Copland then landed and made his way along the coast, sometimes on foot, sometimes in small trading vessels or in canoes, till he reached Cape Coast Castle, where he lived for some months.

In 1818 Copland returned to England, but shortly started on travels through France and Germany. In 1820 he became a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, and settled in Walworth. In 1822 he took a house in Jermyn Street. In 1825 he lectured on medicine at a medical school then in Little Dean Street, and somewhat later at the Middlesex Hospital.

Copland was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1833, and of the College of Physicians in 1837. He attained a good practice. Among his patients was Dyce Sombre.

Copland was president of the Pathological Society, but without the respect of some of the practical morbid anatomists who attended its meetings. He was Croonian lecturer 1844, 1845, 1846; Lumleian lecturer 1854, 1855, and Harveian orator 1857. He gave up practice about a year before his death, which took place at Kilburn 12 July 1870.

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