George Buchanan

George Buchanan, LRCS (1827 – 1905) was a Scottish surgeon. Origins George Buchanan, born at Glasgow on 29 March 1827, was son of Moses Steven Buchanan (1796 – 1860) and Agnes Leechman, his wife. The father, who was surgeon to the Royal Infirmary and lecturer on anatomy in the Portland Street Medical School from 1836 to 1841, was appointed in the latter year Professor of Anatomy in the Andersonian University. Education George was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he graduated MA in 1846. Three years later, after studying under his father and others at the Andersonian University, he became MD St. Andrews and LRCS Edinburgh, and in 1852 Fellow of the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In early life he allowed the advantages of chloroform anaesthesia to be demonstrated upon himself, his father being the operator. Career He began to practise in Glasgow, but in 1856 went to the Crimea as a civil surgeon. He returned to Glasgow at the end of the war, and was one of the first to practise there purely as a consulting surgeon. In 1860, when he succeeded his father as Professor of Anatomy in the Andersonian University, he was also appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. There he had as a colleague Joseph Lister (afterwards Lord Lister), who was led by the prevalence of septic diseases in the wards to the great work of his life the introduction of the antiseptic method of wound treatment.