Charles Alston (botanist)

Charles Alston ( born October 24, 1685 in Eddlewood, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, † November 22, 1760 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish physician and botanist.

Life

On the advice of Anne Hamilton, 3rd Duchess of Hamilton Charles Alston should study jurisprudence. However, he chose medicine and botany. 1715 Alston went to the University of Leiden in order to hear the lectures of Hermann Boerhaave. There he met the Scottish physician Alexander Monro know I.. After his return to Scotland was Alston Lecturer in Materia Medica and Botany in Edinburgh and also superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. He was a critic of Linnaeus ' system of classification of plants.

On the Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh he found his final resting place.

Ehrentaxon

The genus Alstonia from the family of Hundsgiftgewächse was named after him.

Writings (selection )

• Index plantarum præcipue officinalium, quae in horto medico edinburgensi. A. Murray & J. Cochran, 1740 (online).
• Index of the Plants in the Garden Edinburgh. In 1740.
• Tyrocinium Botanicum Edinburgense. 1753 (online).

Further Reading

• DE Allen: Alston, Charles (1685-1760) In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004 ( doi: 10.1093/ref: odnb/425 ).
• " Alston, the Laborious Alston " - Charles Alston as Boerhaave 's True Protégé in Edinburgh. In: Eric Grier Casteel: Entrepot and backwater: A cultural history of the transfer of medical knowledge from Leiden to Edinburgh, 1690-1740. University of California, Los Angeles, 2007, pp. 249-284 (PDF).