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Sir John Struthers, MD, LLD, FRCSE (b.1823-d.1899) was Professor of Anatomy at the University of Aberdeen for 26 years. He published a number of physiological monographs, and became famous for his dissection of the Tay Whale.

Career

Struthers was born near Dunfermline in 1823, the middle of three sons of a flax spinner. All three sons studied medicine. John qualified in Edinburgh in 1845. His initial intentions were to be a surgeon and he took the post of extra-mural lecturer in anatomy in Surgeon's Hall before becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1847. He was then appointed assistant surgeon and later full surgeon to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, but continued as lecturer in anatomy. He then decided to make anatomy his full-time career, and was appointed to the chair in Aberdeen.

The Aberdeen Medical School had been launched in 1860, following the enforced fusion by the University Commissioners of the previously separate universities and medical schools at King's and Marischal Colleges. Medical teaching was centred at Marischal College, and John Struthers, who was appointed the Professor of Anatomy in 1863. He was the initial proponent of the proposal to establish a chair in pathology, eventually endowed in 1882, was the driving force behind the reorganisation and extensions to the Old Infirmary Buildings at Woolmanhill, and was involved with the major extensions at Marischal College.

In 1883, he was also appointed Aberdeen University member of the recently established General Medical Council, and was later elected chairman of their education committee, and had a profound influence on medical education in the United Kingdom. It was on his initiative that the council endorsed the motion to extend the course of study for a medical qualification from four years, which was then common, to at least five years, and introduced proposal to strengthen clinical training.

One of his last acts in the university senate was the introduction of the Science degree. He remained a member of the GMC until 1891 and was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1895-1897. He received an LLD from Glasgow in 1885 and was knighted in 1898.

John Struthers retired to Edinburgh in 1889, and lived in George Square. He died on 24 February 1899. Four days before his death he added a codicil to his will making provision for the delivery of a lecture in anatomy every third year at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He is remembered in Aberdeen by his zoological collection and by the Struthers Medal and Prize, which he founded in 1891. Originally intended for the best dissection which would be kept for posterity, the monetary prize is now awarded by the Professor of Anatomy for the best research dissertation.

Research

His early researches were on the orbital muscles and their nerve supply, but in the early 1860s he became a convinced Darwinian, and most of his subsequent studies were concerned with the study of vestigial and rudimentary structures, and their variation and adaptation. Following his appointment in Aberdeen he spent much time and effort building up a museum of zoological specimens to illustrate Darwin's theory of common descent. This led to constant demands to the university senate for extra space and funds to house and purchase specimens, to the alarm of his faculty colleagues. Many of the specimens were prepared by himself and he became particularly interested in the study of nature's largest mammal - the whale.

Carcasses, skulls and bones were regularly washed up on the North East shore, and these would be transferred to his department for dissection and study, and his private work room was said to reek "...like the deck of a Greenland whaler".

He published details of the anatomy of a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) which had been washed ashore near Peterhead in 1870,3 and the skeleton of a Sei Whale (Balaenoptera borealis) hung over the heads of generations of medical students in the anatomy department, before being moved around 1970 to the museum in the zoology department. It was through this interest in the Cetacea that he became involved in what became known and immortalised as the Tay Whale Incident.