Andrew Combe

Andrew Combe ( born October 27, 1797 in Edinburgh, Scotland; † August 9, 1847 in Gorgie near Edinburgh ) was a famous Scottish physician and phrenologist.

Early life

He was born the fifteenth child of George Combe and his wife Marion Newton in a suburb of Edinburgh. Andrew was the seventh son of his parents and was the younger brother of George Combe, who, like Andrew a famous phrenologist was. After he was sent with eight years on the High School of Edinburgh and had learned Latin and Greek, he trained as a surgeon and was admitted in 1817 to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Phrenology and later life

Andrew Combe went to Paris to complete his medical studies, and was made by his brother, who dealt in by this time with phrenology, attention to this new doctrine. In 1819 he returned to Edinburgh, where he had the first symptoms of tuberculosis.

He founded in 1823, with the help of his friends and with his brother, the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal, which he supported with articles. Also in 1823 he defended phrenology before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh and published in the next few years some works that earned him some supporters.

In 1834 he wanted to be a superintendent in the Montrose Asylum, a psychiatric hospital in the vicinity of Angus in Scotland, but he withdrew his application. Two years later he became a doctor of Leopold I, King of Belgium, and therefore moved to Brussels. But he could not stay long because he had a Hämoptyseanfall, a symptom of tuberculosis, and the Belgian Air blamed. The King and Baron Stockmar persuaded him to stay still for a few weeks, with the intention that he rethink his decision. But he returned to Edinburgh in 1838 and was appointed personal physician of Queen Victoria.

In 1840 he published his last, but probably the best book on the physiological and moral management of infants. From then on, his health deteriorated; he suffered extreme faintness. Therefore, he spent two winters in Madeira and even visited other resorts. In addition, he made a trip to the United States, where he had to travel back to Scotland again because of his tuberculosis shortly after arriving in New York.

He died on 9 August 1847, when he attended a nephew in Gorgie near Edinburgh.

Works

• Observations on Mental Derangement (1831 )
• Principles of Physiology Applied to Health and Education (1834 )
• Physiology of Digestion (1836 )
• What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be (1837 )
• Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy (1840 )