Robert Mortimer Glover

Dr Robert Mortimer Glover FRSE (1815-1859) was a British physician. In 1838 he co-founded the Paris Medical Society and served as its first Vice President. He won the Medical Society of London’s Fothergill Gold Medal in 1846 for his lecture “On the Pathology and Treatment of Scrofula”. Some 5 years prior to James Young Simpson’s use of chloroform on human patients in 1842 Glover discovered its anaesthetic qualities on laboratory animals. He is sometimes called “the true discoverer of chloroform”. In an ironic twist of fate he died from a chloroform overdose.

He was born in South Shields on 2 November 1815 to William Glover, a merchant, and his wife Catherine. In 1829 he was apprenticed to Thomas J. Aitken TRCSE of 31 Nicolson Street in Edinburgh. He began studying Medicine at Edinburgh University the following year, and was clerked to Prof James Syme at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In 1834 he travelled to Geneva in Switzerland to study under Prof Lombard. In 1835 he was elected a member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh. In 1837 he received his licence to practice medicine and travelled to Paris, founding the Paris Medical Society the following year and serving as its first Vice President.

He returned briefly to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1839 before again heading to Edinburgh in 1840. This was to defend his thesis “On the Physiological and Medical Properties of Bromine and its Compounds” from which he then received his doctorate (MD). He then returned to Newcastle to stay with his brother William Glover who was also a doctor, operating from 12 Northumberland Street. He joined the Newcastle School of Medicine and Practical Sciences, serving as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Head of the Department of Materia Medica and Therapeutics.

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