Джон Гудсир: Шотланд анатомы және жасуша теориясының негізін қалаушысы

Scottish anatomist

John Goodsir (20 March 1814 – 6 March 1867) was a Scottish anatomist and a pioneer in the formulation of cell theory.

Goodsir was born on 20 March 1814 in Anstruther, Fife, the son of Elizabeth Dunbar Taylor and John Goodsir (1742–1848), a medical practitioner in the town. He was baptised on 17 April 1814. His younger brother, Joseph Taylor Goodsir, entered the ministry and became minister in Lower Largo. His younger brother, Harry Goodsir, perished on the Franklin expedition. Another brother, Robert, (b. 1824) qualified as a doctor and sailed twice to the Arctic searching for his brother Harry. In December 1826, at the age of 12, Goodsir entered the University of St Andrews, where his classes included classics and mathematics. This allowed him to enter the Edinburgh University Medical School and also attend classes at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He finished his apprenticeship with Nasmyth in 1833, and qualified as Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1835. He then moved back to Anstruther to work in his father's medical practice, which allowed him to resume his boyhood hobby of searching the local coastline along the Firth of Forth for all forms of wildlife. The specimens which he collected formed the basis of the collection he later developed as a museum conservator. In Edinburgh Goodsir had befriended Edward Forbes, who would later become Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, and George Day, later Chandos Professor of Anatomy and Medicine of the University of St Andrews. Together with Goodsir's brother Joseph they rented a flat at 21 Lothian Street close to the university, which became a meeting place for scientists, writers and artists, who together called themselves the Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth. The following year he gave a paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science entitled "Dentition in the ruminants", with some assistance from the University of Edinburgh Professor of Natural History, Robert Jameson. He gave the first description of the stomach bacterium Sarcina ventriculi which demonstrated his status as a shrewd observer and innovative thinker. Two years later, he was appointed curator of the University of Edinburgh natural history collection and he was succeeded as RCSEd Museum Conservator by his brother, Harry Goodsir, who continued in this post until 1845. In May 1844, Goodsir was appointed Anatomy Demonstrator under Alexander Monro. His lectures attracted large numbers of students and did much to restore the University of Edinburgh's reputation for anatomical teaching which had suffered under Monro. The following year he published, jointly with his brother Harry, Anatomical and Pathological Observations based on his earlier lectures at the RCSEd. This book brought international recognition for his ideas on cell structure and function. He concluded that all living organisms are formed of microscopic units, cells. Goodsir was not alone in postulating such a concept and the theory that cells form the basic structure of tissues in all plants and animals has been attributed to Matthias Jakob Schleiden and to Theodor Schwann. Goodsir posed and then answered the questions "What is a cell with its walls, contents, nucleus and nucleolus? How is a cell formed? How do cells multiply?" The theory which he developed from these studies was original and won the extravagant praise of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), who dedicated his masterpiece Cellular Pathology to Goodsir, describing him as "one of the earliest and most acute observers of cell life both physiological and pathological." In 1842, Goodsir was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his proposer being James Syme.

When Alexander Monro tertius retired in 1846, Goodsir was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. applied for the position of Assistant Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, but was not appointed. He moved into Edward Forbes's South Cottage at Wardie in north Edinburgh where he spent the last ten years of his life. Such was the improvement that he brought about in anatomy teaching that by 1860–1861 the size of the anatomy class had grown to 354.

From 1850, Goodsir became unwell, showing the features of the chronic wasting illness which would eventually prove fatal. It made slow and insidious progress and assumed the characters of locomotor ataxia. Brewster, a distinguished physicist and mathematician and now Principal of the University of Edinburgh, had known Goodsir from 1839, when both were members of the Literary and Philosophical Society of St Andrews. Goodsir died at South Cottage, Wardie, Edinburgh on 6 March 1867, at the age of 52. He is buried alongside one of the central paths in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, next to his friend Forbes.