When I use a word . . . Alumni of the Edinburgh Medical School 1726-2026: Robert Darwin versus William Withering

After qualifying in medicine, two members of the Darwin family, each of whom had received some of their medical education in the Edinburgh Medical School in the second half of the 18 th century, set up in medical practice, Erasmus Darwin in Lichfield and his son Robert Waring Darwin in Shrewsbury. William Withering, who had also graduated from the Edinburgh Medical School, was at the same time practising in Birmingham. None of the three had been contemporaries in Edinburgh. In 1788 Withering was consulted by an apothecary in Wellington, Shropshire, about the case of a woman, Mrs Houlston, whom Robert Darwin had attended the day before. Withering thought that Darwin’s prescription had been inappropriate and changed it. This led to a series of vituperative epistolary exchanges between the two. Erasmus, Robert’s father, may have been involved in the affair, by urging his son to attack Withering and by helping him to write his letters.