John Coldstream

John Coldstream (1806–1863) was a Scottish physician.

Coldstream, only son of Robert Coldstream, merchant in Timber Bush, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Phillips of Stobcross, Glasgow, was born at Leith on 19 March 1806, and after attending the Royal High School, Edinburgh, continued his studies at the university. He took an interest in Bible and missionary societies, and in 1822 wrote the report of the Leith Juvenile Bible Society.

When he decided to study medicine, Coldstream became apprenticed to Dr. Charles Anderson, a general practitioner in Leith and one of the founders of the Wernerian Society. Coldstream's love of natural history led to his election as a member of the student Plinian Society on 18 March 1823; he acted as secretary and treasurer in the same year, and was appointed as one of the presidents in 1824 and 1825. Along with the radical materialist William A. F. Browne, he nominated Charles Darwin for membership of the Plinian. He became well acquainted with Darwin and they went together to collect marine invertebrates on the shores of the Firth of Forth at Leith. In dramatic debates at the Plinian Society, Browne suggested that the mind could have a material basis in the brain, and Coldstream (like Darwin) was present when Browne presented his view that phrenology could best be understood in Lamarckian terms.

In 1827 he graduated M.D. at the University of Edinburgh, and took his diploma at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and then proceeded to Paris for his hospital study to continue his medical education. There, he suffered an acute depressive illness, struggling with "the foul mass of corruption within my own bosom", held captive to his body by "corroding desires" and "lustful imaginations". The doctor's report was that though Coldstream had led "a blameless life", he was "more or less in the dark on the vital question of religion, and was troubled with doubts arising from certain Materialist views, which are, alas!, all too common among medical students". He remained in France until June, then set out for Prussia hoping to travel up the Rhine and through Switzerland and the north of Italy, but these plans were cancelled when he took ill in Westphalia and had to hurry home through the Netherlands. He returned to Leith around the end of July in a poor state of health, recovering very slowly. For a time he gave up natural history to prepare for medical practice.

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