A splendid example of a medical presentation binding, awarded to a medical student “for his knowledge of pathology and practice of physic” during “the weekly examinations” of 1830-31 by the Edinburgh physician and lecturer in medicine Dr. John Mackintosh (d.1837). The recipient, R. T. C. Scott (1812-1875), obtained his medical licence from the Edinburgh College of Surgeons at just nineteen years of age. He entered the navy as an assistant-surgeon in 1833, and retired from the service as Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals and Fleets in 1870. Amongst the honours conferred upon him were Sir G. Blane’s gold medal for a military history of the Burmese War in 1852, while serving in H.M.S. Hastings, the silver medal of the H.E.I.C. for the same war, and the Baltic Medal. Notably, his public lobbying in medical journals against the use of the stomach-pump as a naval punishment, also led to an Admiralty Order for the immediate abolition of the practice. On his retirement from his superintendence of Sheerness Dockyard, he ultimately retired to his native Shetland (BMJ, 6th March 1875, p.332).
The present work, by the pre-eminent Scottish physician John Abercrombie (1780-1844), forms a comprehensive account of diseases of the brain and spinal cord exemplified by numerous detailed case studies, and would have certainly formed a most fitting award for a talented, ambitious young doctor such as Scott.