Thomas Richard Fraser

Sir Thomas Richard Fraser ( born February 5, 1841 in Calcutta, † January 4, 1920 in Edinburgh ) was a British physician and pharmacologist.

Life

He studied at the University of Edinburgh and received his doctorate 1862. 1869 he was a medical assistant at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In 1877 he took part in an Arctic expedition. In 1877 he became a professor of medicine and in the following year professor of clinical medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In 1880 he was dean of the medical faculty.

Later, he was also an insurance consultant and the Scottish Commission for prisons. In 1869 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1877 and a member of the Royal Society. In 1889/90 he reported for the first time hispidus on the arrow poison in the coastal region of Kenya and examined Calabar bean and Strophanthus. 1898/99 he was president of the Government Commission to study the bubonic plague in India in 1900 and President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1902 he was knighted.

With his wife Susanna Margaret Duncan Fraser he had a son, Sir Francis Richard Fraser (1885-1964), who also became a professor in Edinburgh.

Publications

• The antagonism in between the actions of active substances; British Medical journal, 1872
• On the Physiological Action of the Calabar bean, Physostigma venenosum Balf. ; Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, XXIV, 1867, PMC 1318559 ( free full text )
• On the connexion in between chemical constitution and physiological action; ibid XXV
• On Stropanthus hispidus; ibid XXXV
• An investigation into some added anonymously undescribed tetanic symptoms produced by atropia in cold-blooded animals
• Strophanthus hispidus: its Natural History, Chemistry and Pharmacology. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol XXXV, 955-1028