James Scarth Combe

After studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he received his doctorate (MD) in 1815 and was licensed as a surgeon (LRCSEd) in the same year.

While taking the MD examination, he was being questioned by Prof Andrew Duncan when the guns of Edinburgh Castle fired to mark the victory at Waterloo and end of the Napoleonic Wars.

[3] Combe appears to have taken an early interest in diseases of the blood, presenting a case of anaemia to the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1822.

Despite various treatments including iron, chalybeate (iron-containing) spa water and a nourishing diet, the patient died.

At the autopsy, where he was assisted by Kellie, he found the stomach was "thin, showing no vessels and transparent", a description of atrophic gastritis, which is a distinctive feature of pernicious anaemia, and preceded Dr Thomas Addison’s admittedly fuller account by 27 years.

[5][6] In 1828 Combe published a paper in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal entitled "On the Poisonous effects of the Mussel, Mytius Edlulis", looking at the issue of accumulation of toxins in molluscs.

Back in his home town of Leith, he worked with Dr Thomas Latta on the pioneering use of intravenous infusions of saline to manage the disease.