Researching William Cullen

He was President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (1746–47), President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1773–1775) and First Physician to the King in Scotland (1773–1790). He also assisted in obtaining a royal charter for the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, resulting in the formation of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.

Cullen was a beloved teacher, and many of his students became influential figures. He kept in contact with many of his students, including Benjamin Rush, a central figure in the founding of the United States of America; John Morgan, who founded the first medical school in the American colonies, the Medical School at the College of Philadelphia; William Withering, the discoverer of digitalis; Sir Gilbert Blane, medical reformer of the Royal Navy; and John Coakley Lettsom, the philanthropist and founder of the Medical Society of London.

Cullen's student and later rival John Brown developed the medical system known as Brunonianism, which conflicted with Cullen's. The competition between the two systems had knock-on effects in how patients were treated worldwide, especially in Italy and Germany, during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.

Cullen was also an author. He published a number of medical textbooks, mostly for the use of his students, though they were popular in Europe and the American colonies. His best known work was First Lines of the Practice of Physic, which was published in a series of editions between 1777 and 1784.

Born in County Donegal, Ireland, Cullen immigrated to the United States in 1832 with his parents, who settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he attended the public schools and the Allegheny Academy. He later relocated to Adams Township, LaSalle County, Illinois, in 1846 and engaged in agricultural pursuits. Sheriff of LaSalle County, Illinois (1864-65). He moved to Ottawa, Illinois, in 1865, and worked as the political editor of the Ottawa Republican 1871-1887. Cullen was elected as a Republican to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1881 – March 3, 1885).

Cullen was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1884. He lived in retirement in Ottawa, Illinois, until his death there January 17, 1914. He was interred in Ottawa Avenue Cemetery.