John Macintyre or Mcintyre

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(2 October 1857 – 29 October 1928) was a Scottish doctor who set up the world's first

radiology Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiat ...

department at the

Glasgow Royal Infirmary The Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) is a large teaching hospital. With a capacity of around 1,000 beds, the hospital campus covers an area of around , and straddles the Townhead and Dennistoun districts on the north-eastern fringe of the city cen ...

, in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popu ...

.John Macintyre
University of Glasgow

Life

Macintyre was born in High Street, Glasgow. His father was a tailor. His mother was related to the missionary and explorer

David Livingstone David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...

. Macintyre originally trained as an electrical engineer and worked as an apprentice electrician before enrolling to the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

in 1878. There he changed his field for medicine and graduated in 1882 with the

Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery ( la, Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae; abbreviated most commonly MBBS), is the primary medical degree awarded by medical schools in countries that follow the tradition of the United Ki ...

degree. He then worked as a

naval surgeon A naval surgeon, or less commonly ship's doctor, is the person responsible for the health of the ship's company aboard a warship. The term appears often in reference to Royal Navy's medical personnel during the Age of Sail. Ancient uses Speciali ...

in London, Paris and Vienna, and returned to Glasgow to assume a position of a Surgeon for Diseases of the Throat at Anderson's College Dispensary. He later established a private practice specialising in the treatment of singers and actors. As part of his interest in the larynx he was responsible for creating the first self-illuminated

endoscope An endoscope is an inspection instrument composed of image sensor, optical lens, light source and mechanical device, which is used to look deep into the body by way of openings such as the mouth or anus. A typical endoscope applies several modern t ...

around 1894/5.http://sshm.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PROCEEDINGS-SESSION-1994-1995-and-1995-1996.pdf Macintyre is mostly known for applying his electrical engineering knowledge to medicine. In 1885 he became Consulting Medical Electrician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary where he established a "department for the application of medical electricity" in 1887. In 1893 he became President of the British Laryngological Society. In 1895 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were John Gray McKendrick,

James Thomson Bottomley James Thomson Bottomley (10 January 1845 – 18 May 1926) was an Irish-born British physicist. He is noted for his work on thermal radiation and on his creation of 4-figure logarithm tables, used to convert long multiplication and division ca ...

, Magnus Maclean and William Jack. Late in 1895,

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

s were discovered by

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; ; 27 March 184510 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achie ...

. On 5 February 1896

asked McIntyre to demonstrate an x-ray machine created by his uncle, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin following instructions from Rontgen (Lord Kelvin was ill and could not attend). The demonstration took place at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and was the first use of x-rays in Scotland. All Scottish hospitals introduced x-ray machines within the next 12 months. Macintyre went further and recorded an X-ray movie of the moving legs of a frog, and presented the results in a report "On Roentgen X-Rays, or the new photography" to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow in 1896. In the same year, he set up the world's first radiology department at the

, where X-ray photographs were used in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. There, Macintyre produced the first images of renal stones and various inner body parts. For his groundbreaking work, he received many awards and honours. In 1897 he moved to London and founded the Rontgen Society of London. He served as their first President. He was also President of the West of Scotland Branch of the

British Medical Association The British Medical Association (BMA) is a registered trade union for doctors in the United Kingdom. The association does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The association's headqua ...

, Corresponding Fellow of the American and French Laryngological Associations, Fellow of the

and of the Royal Microscopical Society, among other posts.John Macintyre
Strathclyde University He died on 29 October 1928.

Family

In 1892 he married Agnes Jean Hardie.

References

External links

Glasgow Story
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macintyre, John 1857 births 1928 deaths 19th-century Scottish medical doctors 20th-century Scottish medical doctors British radiologists Alumni of the University of Glasgow Medical doctors from Glasgow Articles containing video clips Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society Royal Navy Medical Service officers