Combe

Combe, ANDREW, M.D., physician and physiologist, was born in Edinburgh, October 27, 1797. He studied medicine there and at Paris, and in 1823 commenced to practise in his native city. In 1836 he received the appointment of physician to the king of the Belgians, but his health failing, he returned to Scotland, where in 1838 he became one of the physicians to Queen Victoria. Mild, benevolent, and wise, Andrew Combe obtained the esteem and admiration of all who could appreciate purity and excellence of character. By patient adherence to physiological principles in the treatment of a delicate constitution, he combated a serious pulmonary disease for nearly thirty years at home and abroad. His death was probably hastened by exposure to the poisonous air of an emigrant ship, in which he made a voyage to America: he wrote to the Times on the urgent necessity of a law regulating the sanitary arrangements in emigrant vessels, and in 1849 an act provided a remedy for the evil. He died at Gorgie, near Edinburgh, August 9, 1847. His principal works are: Observations on Mental Derangement (1831), Principles of Physiology (1834; 15th ed. 1860), The Physiology of Digestion (1836; 10th ed. 1860), and The Management of Infancy (1840; 10th ed. 1870). See his Life by his brother, George Combe (1850).