Thomas Clouston

Thomas Clouston
Thomas Clouston
Thomas Clouston's grave, Dean Cemetery

Sir Thomas Smith Clouston FRSE PRCPE (22 April 1840 – 19 April 1915) was a Scottish psychiatrist.[1][2]

Life

Clouston was born the son of Robert Clouston of Nist House, in the Birsay parish of Orkney,[3] and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Edinburgh.[1] Clouston qualified M.D.(Edinburgh) with a thesis on the nervous system of the lobster, supervised by John Goodsir.

His early interest in insanity resulted in an apprenticeship with David Skae, the eminent Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. In 1863, Clouston was appointed superintendent of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Asylum (Garlands Hospital) in Carlisle; and in 1873, in succession to Skae, Superintendent of the new Royal Edinburgh Asylum, which had been set up under new principles laid down by the then Commissioner to the Scottish Health Board, Sir James Coxe . In 1879, Clouston was appointed successor to Thomas Laycock as Lecturer on Mental Diseases in the University of Edinburgh, a post which he held in conjunction with his position at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Clouston became a celebrated lecturer with an international reputation for his exposition of the psychiatric disorders of adolescence. Clouston published extensively, beginning with his remarkable Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases (1883), followed, much later, by his more popular work Unsoundness of Mind (1911).[4] Another book aimed at the general public was entitled Morals and The Brain; and he remained an unreconstructed believer in "masturbational insanity" and an uncompromising advocate of teetotalism in opposition to his exact contemporary, the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne. In 1888, Clouston served as President of the Medico-Psychological Association.

In 1875 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers were Sir Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, John Hutton Balfour, Sir William Turner and Alexander Crum Brown.[5]

In 1894 he opened the Craighouse extension to the asylum on Easter Craiglockhart Hill, which was renamed the Thomas Clouston Clinic in 1972. The buildings now form part of Napier University.[3] From 1902 to 1904 he was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Clouston retired in 1908 and was knighted in 1911.[3] He is commemorated by a brass plaque on the eastern aspect of the North Transept of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. His son was the author Storer Clouston.[6] He Received the Freedom of the Burgh of Kirkwall on 28 August 1908. [7]

At the end of his life Clouston lived at 26 Heriot Row, an elegant and substantial Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh's New Town.[8]

He is buried in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh with his wife Dame Harriet Secur Storer (1835-1917). The grave lies on the obscured southern terrace. His daughter, Augusta Maud Clouston CBE (1871-1960) lies to the side, with her husband Sir David Wallace (1862-1952).

Clouston Memorial Trust

An award of £1,000 initially donated to the Royal College of Physicians in 1982. The income from the trust is used for “prize money for essay or lecture on paediatrics in Sri Lanka, India & Africa or in such other countries as the Council may decide”. The award is granted every 3 years.

Publications

Academic offices
Preceded by
Thomas Richard Fraser		 President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
1902–1904 		Succeeded by
John Playfair

References

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Thomas Smith Clouston
  1. 1 2 "Sir Thomas Clouston (1840–1915)". Nature. 145 (3677): 619. 1940. doi:10.1038/145619c0.
  2. ↑ Beveridge, Allan (2004) "Clouston, Sir Thomas Smith (1840–1915)", in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38634
  3. 1 2 3 "Gazetteer for Scotland – Sir Thomas Clouston". Retrieved 20 January 2010.
  4. ↑ "Unsoundness of Mind (1911) – Sir Thomas Clouston". Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  5. ↑ https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf
  6. ↑ Anon (1915) Obituary. Edinburgh Medical Journal 14 pp. 385–388
  7. ↑ http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/54/227/802
  8. ↑ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office directory 1910-11
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