John McDiarmid: 1849 - 1927
John was a Great Great Uncle on my Scottish granny's side. I knew nothing at all about him until I started this research. Now, from what I've learned, I think he must have been an amazingly talented and interesting person, something of a nineteenth century polymath - a native Gaelic speaker, a highly qualified doctor, an expert in sheep farming, and a keen student of Scottish history.
My auntie Lib, born in 1924, remembers John and his younger brother James as two elderly men in tweed plus-fours and hats, known within the family as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
He left home at the age of 15 to become a student at the University of Edinburgh. He initially enrolled in the Arts Faculty, but later switched to Medicine, graduating with Honours in 1874. His first job was at the Perth District Asylum where he was an Assistant Physician. He continued studying and experimenting while he was working there and got published in the Journal of Mental Science. He then went into practice in Durham in the north of England and was probably only about 30 years old when he had to give up his career in medicine for health reasons, at which point he returned to the family home where he took up sheep farming.
Key milestones in his life that I know of are as follows:
1849: John was born at Claggan on 23 April 1849. The eldest son of Robert and Margaret McDiarmid, he was their second child. He was baptised on 30 April.
1859: The family moved from Claggan, which was on the south side of Loch Tay near Ardtalnaig, to Auchnafree in Glen Almond.
ca 1864: John left home to study at Edinburgh University. He initially went through the Arts Curriculum there and obtained honours in Logic and Moral Philosophy. He then went on to study Medicine. In his own words her describes his medical studies as follows:
1873: His mother, Margaret, died at Auchnafree.
1874: John graduated with Honours from the University of Edinburgh as a Bachelor of Medicine and Master in Surgery.
1874-1877: John entered into employment. In 1877 he summarised his employment history as follows:
1876: A paper by John was printed in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for October 1876 under the title "Compound Fracture of the Patella". In the paper he describes "how a moveable joint was obtained with very little constitutional disturbance, and with scarcely a trace of pus, in a patient of the untoward age of sixty and labouring under the grave complication of acute mania".
He introduces the patient as follows:
The paper then goes on to describe the injury and the patient's condition and provides a timeline detailing the treatment and the various stages of recovery which together last for 4 months. On 9th October the patient "was discharged recovered mentally. She could walk up and down stairs without difficulty, walked about half a mile without uneasiness, and the limb could be bent at the knee almost to a right angle" and "there was every reason to believe that the limb would be almost, if not quite, as useful as it had every been".
1877: In March, at the age of only 27, John prepared an application for the post of Chair of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Click here to read the many testimonials which he amassed in support of his candidacy.
Whether this job application was ever sent, received or considered I do not know, but it is clear that John did not move to New Zealand, and it is possible that this is the point at which he abandoned his medical career altogether for unspecified health reasons.
1881: The census shows John living with his father, by now a widower, and 4 of his siblings living at Auchnafree.
1887: The family moved from Auchnafree to Morenish in Killin.
1890: His father, Robert, died at Morenish.
1927: John died in Edinburgh on 22 February aged 77. Both The Scotsman and the Perthshire Advertiser carried obituaries to him.