Ferrier, DAVID

Ferrier, DAVID, a distinguished physician and scientist, was born at Woodside, Aberdeen, in 1843, and educated at the university there, where he graduated with the highest honours in 1863, and soon after gained the inter-university distinction of a Ferguson scholarship. After a period of study at Heidelberg he settled as a student of medicine at Edinburgh, and graduated in 1868 at the close of an exceptionally distinguished course. In 1872 he was appointed professor of Forensic Medicine at King's College, London, and afterwards became physician to its hospital, and also to the National Hospital for the Paralyse and Epileptic. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876, of the Royal College of Physicians the following year, and was made LL.D. by Aberdeen in 1883. Dr Ferrier's chief scientific work has been in the region of the brain, and its relations to such diseases as epilepsy, his name being especially famous for a brilliant series of experimental researches into the localisation of its functions, which have made him a bête noire to the anti-vivisectionists at any price. In 1876 he published The Functions of the Brain, which was followed by The Localisation of Cerebral Disease (1878), and 'The Effect of Lesion of Different Regions of the Cerebral Hemispheres' (with Professor Yeo) in part ii. of the Royal Society's Transactions for 1884 (see BRAIN). He was one of the founders, and is still an editor, of the well-known journal, Brain.