| Description | William Smellie was born in Lanark on 5th February 1697. He practised medicine before getting a licence, but enrolled later at the University of Glasgow and received his MD degree in 1745. After training in obstetrics in London and Paris, he opened a practice in London and began teaching. He invented a 'machine', an obstetrical manikin, for instructions. Smellie described the mechanism of labor, designed obstetrical forceps, devised a manoeuvre to deliver the head of a breech, and published his teachings.
He died in Lanark on 5th March 1763. The tomb in which William Smellie (and later his wife) was buried still stands in the St. Kentigerns section of Lanark graveyard.
[Source: Wikipedia]
Contents: Copy of a catalogue of William Smellie's library, c1763; copy of will and codicil of William Smellie, c1763 |