McCulloch One Name Study

He graduated M.A. at Edinburgh University in 1592, having been born, if we can trust his monumental epitaph, in 1576. As precocious as his elder brother, he essayed the Ministry, and, according to ‘Fasti’, became Minister of Broughtoun in 1593, but resigned in 1595 because he could ‘find na sufficient provisioun’. Clearly, the Church provided but little prospect for this ambitious young Scot. But philosophy was part of the curriculum at Edinburgh, so his first effort to find employment on the continent was at Leyden, where he applied on 20 November 1597 for the post of lecturer of philosophy at that university. But there was no more money in philosophy than in the church, so he turned his thoughts to alchemy, which, in not too scrupulous hands, could be made definitely profitable. In 1598 he entered Basle University as a student of medicine. Like many another of later date, he had to teach in order to maintain himself and pay his university fees. In 1600 he was teaching at Montpellier University and, probably graduated M.D. there. He is then believed, on slight evidence, to have transferred to Franeker himself, in Holland, and then obtained his real chance of making good. It is not known how that chance came his way but he is next found as physician to Rudolf, the Holy Roman Emperor, who died in 1612. Two years later, he was invited by Cosmo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to teach at the University of Pisa as Professor of Chemistry and Physics; from this post he was asked to resign in 1617, perhaps because he devoted his talents too much to the profitable practice of alchemy and astrology. One of his friends was the well known Julius Caballus, to whom he dedicated a book in 1616. He returned to Britain and attracted the attention of James I, whose interest in alchemy was well known. The date of his appointment as Physician in Ordinary to that King has yet to be ascertained, but, as such, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians without examination on 25 June 1621. He died on 6 September 1622 without issue: and his executors erected a monument to his memory in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, from the grandiloquent inscription on which, some details of his life can be derived. It is just inside the south-east door, opposite the Houses of Parliament. The £10,000 which he paid to Sir John Vaus to extinguish his bond over Myretoun doubtless represented his professional savings. This was paid on 3 March 1622 and it was a cruel fortune that he only lived a few months to enjoy the fruits of his labours.