Robert Halliday Gunning FRSE PRPSE FSA LLD (12 December 1818 – 22 March 1900) was a Scottish surgeon, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He did much to improve social conditions in Brazil and also became rich there. He endowed numerous prizes and awards including the Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prizes. The University of Edinburgh provides scholarships under the title of Gunning Victoria Jubilee Bursaries. He was a close friend of both Thomas Chalmers and Robert Christison.
Life
He was born Richard Halliday Gunnion on 12 December 1818 at Wood House in Ruthwell on the southern coast of Dumfriesshire. He was the eighth of ten children of Elizabeth Affleck McWilliam and James Gunnion. In 1822 the family moved to Kirkbean on the opposite side of the River Nith and later to New Abbey before settling in Dumfries. He was educated at the local school in Ruthwell then Dumfries Academy.
He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh from around 1832. From 1835 he worked on the staff of Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary. In 1839, aged 20, he was licensed to practice as a surgeon by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 1840 he went to Marischal College in Aberdeen to act as Demonstrator to Professor Allen Thomson (a demonstrator performs surgery on cadavers whilst the professor lectures). In 1841 both Thomson and Gunning went to the University of Edinburgh, Thomson to take over as Professor of Physiology, Gunning to oversee the anatomy rooms under Professor Alexander Monro. Gunning was skilled, and in one of the world's most prestigious centres for the training of doctors in the mid-19th century. His pupils included William Tennant Gairdner, William Overend Priestley and Henry Duncan Littlejohn. The University granted him his doctorate (MD) in 1846.
In 1843, as a religious man, Gunning's world was rocked by the Disruption of the Church of Scotland which caused a split in the church, and in the allegiance of congregations. Gunning was an admirer of Rev Dr Thomas Chalmers who had led the split, and admired his vision of free schools, church missions etc. Gunning joined Chalmer's church in the West Port, Edinburgh rising to be a church elder. Gunning gave large sums to the church throughout his later life, including the full cost of a model lodging house attached to the church for housing the poor of the parish. In 1882 he laid the foundation stone to the replacement church on the corner of West Port and Lady Lawson Street: The Chalmers Territorial Free Church, seating over 900 persons, and paid for almost entirely by Gunning. At this same period, also through the influence of Chalmers and Robert Christison, he persuaded the University of Edinburgh to add the requirement for the study of at least one natural science into its theology degree, the University thereafter being one of the first universities to combine these two apparently diametrically opposed fields. In this, all felt that new discoveries in a science in no way undermined religion, and indeed science should be used as a means to back religious ideologies. Gunning paid for these extra lectures at his own expense, making it hard for the University to refuse.
From 1846 to 1848 he served as president of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. During this period he lived at 12 Argyll Square, close to the University, and following his marriage in 1847 he moved to a larger house at 43 George Square.
Following in the footsteps of Robert Mortimer Glover, the more recognised James Young Simpson, and the overtly practical Francis Brodie Imlach, Gunning undertook experiments on the use and safety of chloroform during 1847/8. Gunning was firmly in the Glover camp: that chloroform was too dangerous for use on humans for full anaesthesia (Imlach used only partial anaesthesia, for dental extractions, perhaps the most logical use). In May 1848 he presented his findings to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh and was critical of Simpson's advocacy of human use. Simpson (there present) defended his beliefs. However, public opinion, including a knighthood for Simpson and widespread media coverage, dominated the feelings of the general public. Medical truth was therefore suppressed and the use of chloroform spread widely, much to the delight of Dr James Duncan of Duncan & Flockhart of Edinburgh, who held the British licence for production. Gunning's experiments confirmed those of Glover (who had already left Britain in his disgust of Simpson's plagiarism of his own work, Simpson being the official reader of Glover's university thesis on the subject). Gunning also established that Simpson had undertaken no systematic experimentation whatsoever. Gunning equally became disillusioned at his own profession.