Robert Jackson (surgeon, born 1750)

Supporting himself by going twice on a whaling voyage as surgeon, he finished his studies without graduating, and went to Jamaica, where he acted as assistant to a doctor at Savanna-la-mer from 1774 to 1780.

He next made his way to New York, with the intention of joining the state volunteers; but he was eventually received by the colonel of a Scottish regiment (the 71st) as ensign, with the duties of hospital-mate.

He left early in 1783 on a journey on foot through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, and landed on his return at Southampton with four shillings in his pocket.

His wife's fortune placed him in easy circumstances, and he spent the next year in Paris, attending hospitals and studying languages (including Arabic), and then went to Leyden, where he passed an examination for M.D.

When war broke out in 1793, he was appointed surgeon to the 3rd regiment (Buffs), on the strength of a book which he had published on West Indian fevers.

While campaign he wrote seven pamphlets (from 1803 to 1809), was obliged to retire from active service, and committed an assault on Keate, the surgeon-general, striking him across the shoulders with his gold-headed cane, and suffered six months' imprisonment.

[1] Jackson's first book was 'A Treatise on the Fevers of Jamaica,’ 1791 (reprinted at Philadelphia in 1795, and in German at Leipzig in 1796), the result of his early experience as an assistant.

He took up military medical arrangements again in 1804 in his best-known work, 'A Systematic View of the Formation, Discipline, and Economy of Armies,’ which was republished by him at Stockton in 1824, and finally at London in 1845, with portrait and memoir.