George Fordyce was born at Aberdeen in 1736, a short time after the death of his father, George Fordyce, proprietor of a small landed estate called Broadford, near the city. He was taken from home at the age of two following his mother's remarriage and was sent to Foveran, Aberdeenshire, where he received his schooling. Following that he attended the University of Aberdeen where he attained the degree of Master of Arts at the age of 14.
Career
Fordyce had decided to study medicine and was apprenticed to his uncle, Dr. John Fordyce, in Uppingham, in Rutland. He later returned to Edinburgh, where he took his degree of M.D. in 1758; his inaugural dissertation was on catarrh. From Edinburgh he went to Leyden, where he studied anatomy under the famous anatomistBernhard Siegfried Albinus. In 1759 he returned to England, having decided to settle in London as a teacher and medical practitioner. Despite his relations' disapproval, he persisted, and by the end of 1759 had commenced a course of lectures upon chemistry. In 1764, he also began to lecture upon Materia medica and the practice of physic. He delivered these lectures for nearly 30 years. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, his habits had always been such as to try his constitution; and in early life, it is said, he often reconciled the claims of pleasure and business by lecturing for three hours in the morning without having gone to bed the night before. In 1765 he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and in 1770 was elected physician to St Thomas' Hospital. In 1774 he was chosen as a member of the Literary Club, in 1776 a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1778 a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. This latter was chiefly to secure his assistance with a new edition of the College's Pharmacopoeia. He was Harveian Orator in 1791. In 1783, with John Hunter, he assisted in setting up a small society of physicians and surgeons, which later published several volumes of transactions under the title of Transactions of a Society for the improvement of medical and chirurgical knowledge, and attended its meetings regularly until shortly before his death.
Dining habits
Fordyce was an eccentric, who ate only one meal of meat a day at the same hour in the same place. He would always eat a pound and a half of rump steak and whilst this was being prepared, half a broiled chicken or plate of fish. As reported in The Epicure's Almanack, Fordyce dined daily at Dolly's Chophouse:
Elements of Agriculture and Vegetation. This was a collection of a course of lectures assembled by one of his listeners. Fordyce corrected the copy, and afterwards published it under this title.
Elements of the practice of Physic. This was used by him as a textbook for a part of his course of lectures on that subject.
A Treatise on the Digestion of Food. It was originally read before the College of Physicians, as the Guelstonian Lecture.
Four Dissertations on Fever. A fifth, which completed the subject, was left by him in manuscript form, and posthumously published.
