Abstract
Not all medical memorials commemorate doctors who have achieved national or international fame. Some are erected by local communities in gratitude for a life well spent among them. One such is the statue of Dr John Grigor erected by the people of Nairn, Scotland. It shows him as his contemporaries would have known and wished to remember him – a benign elderly man using a walking stick and dressed in a short cape and broad brimmed hat (Figure 1).
Doctor Grigor of Nairn
John Grigor was born in Elgin on 16 September 1814, the youngest son of an impecunious lawyer. 1 He was intended to follow his father's career and went to Marischal College, Aberdeen, to study Law. However, he disliked this and returned to Elgin in 1830, when he was apprenticed briefly to Dr James Stephen. He also met and learned from Robert Liston (1794–1897), born in Ecclesmachan, West Lothian, and one of the foremost surgeons of the time, who visited Dr Gray's Hospital, Elgin, twice a year to tutor local surgeons. In 1831 Grigor began studies at the Medical School in Edinburgh. He did not complete his degree but graduated Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1834.
In 1835 he sailed as Assistant Surgeon on an East Indiaman, the Lord Lowther, bound for India and China, seeking to make his fortune. He returned to Britain in 1837 having failed in this quest. He was unemployed and penniless when one of Nairn's three doctors died and a second wished to reduce his medical workload on becoming Provost of the town. Grigor took the opportunity of setting up practice there. He soon became known as a hardworking, skilful and caring physician and his practice thrived. He married Jane McInnes in 1845 but they did not have children. He proceeded MD Aberdeen in 1847. In the same year the Town and County Hospital opened in Nairn and for many years Grigor, who had given support to the project from the beginning, served on its Management Committee. Following a cholera epidemic in 1849 he campaigned unsuccessfully to get clean piped water into the town. It was not until 1871, after another cholera epidemic, that Nairn got clean water and a sewage system.
In 1853 Grigor was elected to the Town Council. During the next few years he inspired and was active in many successful campaigns to improve the town. These included bringing the railway to Nairn, a new pier, a hotel, a museum, a swimming pool (at one time said to be the largest in the world), a public hall and renovations to the parish church. Until Grigor's time Nairn had been little more than a fishing village. Afterwards it became known as the Brighton of the North. In 1875 he founded the Nairn Literary Institute which meets regularly to this day.
In 1860 Grigor was elected Provost but resigned after only seven months, unable to bear the adversarial and acrimonious nature of council meetings and lacking the patience to tolerate the slowness of the bureaucratic process. He also resigned as a Town Councillor and refused to reconsider this decision despite a petition signed by the majority of the electorate. He retired from general practice in Nairn in 1867 after an accident in which he broke his leg, but from 1869 he spent part of each year practising in Rome where he specialized in midwifery for both the British expatriate community and Italians, many of whom he recommended travel to Nairn for its healthy climate. In 1881 failing health forced him to give this up and retire to Nairn. He died on 18 October 1886. 2
Grigor was described as being popular and public spirited but also outspoken and obstinate. He remained at heart a doctor whose first priority was always the health and wellbeing of his patients and who served both wealthy and poor patients equally. However, his sole published contribution to medicine was a case report in 1852 of a death by spontaneous combustion (catacausis), at that time an acceptable cause of death.