William Cumberland Cruikshank (1745 in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

– 27 June 1800) was a British physician and

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...

. He was the author of ''The Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels of the Human Body'', which was first published in 1786.Pilcher, Lewis Stephen (1918). ''A List of Books by Some of the Old Masters of Medicine and Surgery'', p. 132. Brooklyn, New York. He went to London in 1771 and became assistant to William Hunter in his anatomical work. In 1797, he was the first to demonstrate that a particular crystallizable substance exists in the

urine Urine is a liquid by-product of metabolism in humans and in many other animals. Urine flows from the kidneys through the ureters to the urinary bladder. Urination results in urine being excretion, excreted from the body through the urethra. Cel ...

and is precipitated from it by

nitric acid Nitric acid is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but older samples tend to be yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available nitri ...

. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in June 1797.

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Further reading