Goodsir, JOHN

Goodsir, JOHN, anatomist, was born in 1814, at Anstruther in Fife, studied arts at St Andrews University, and was next apprenticed to a dentist in Edinburgh, attending the medical classes there the while. In 1839 he published a striking essay on the teeth, and next year became keeper of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, where he lectured on the diseases of bone and cartilage (1842-43). He also investigated the minute structure of the healthy tissues, and was one of the first observers who strongly insisted on the importance, throughout the animal textures, of the cell as a centre of nutrition. His important memoirs on Secreting Structures and on the Human Placenta, and many of his papers in comparative anatomy and natural history, are still of value. Of these a volume was issued in 1845. In 1844 Goodsir was appointed assistant to Dr Monro, professor of Anatomy in the university of Edinburgh, and two years later became his successor. Here he maintained a wide reputation as an anatomical teacher. Ill-health overtook him near the close of his life, and he died 6th March 1867. See the Memoir by Professor Turner (1868).