Patrick Russell (herpetologist)

Patrick Russell (6 February 1726,[1] Edinburgh – 2 July 1805, London)[2] was a Scottish surgeon and naturalist who worked in India.

He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1750 and joined his half-brother, Alexander Russell, who was 12 years senior in Aleppo, Syria.

Alexander was involved in quarantine and disease control and was a keen naturalist with a knowledge of local languages and a close friend of the Pasha.

A keen observer of traditions, he noted in a letter read by Alexander to the Royal Society an Arabian practice of inoculating children against smallpox using "variolus matter".

While in London, Patrick was introduced to Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander who examined his collections from Aleppo.

[4] In 1781, a younger brother, Claud became a chief administrator of the East India Company at Visakhapatnam in Madras Province.

This post, according to Ray Desmond (1992, European Discovery of Indian Flora) was: Russell wrote about the plant and animal life of Madras as he had of Aleppo.

As a physician, as well as a naturalist, to the East India Company in the Carnatic, he was concerned with the problem of snakebite and made it his aim to find a way for people to identify venomous snakes.

He tested remedies claimed for snakebite including a pill from Tanjore which was very popular and found that it did not work.