Sir Alexander Dick (173)

Sir Alexander [Cuninghame] Dick (23 October 1703-10 November 1785) doctor and agriculturalist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, via his 1768 election to the American Society. Alexander Dick was born Alexander Cuninghame to the Baronet of Caprington and his wife Dame Janet. As the couple’s third son and therefore unlikely to inherit either title or estate, the youthful Alexander grasped early that he would need to secure his own place in Scottish society. To this end, he successfully pursued medicine, first by earning a MD in Leyden in 1725, followed by a doctor’s degree ad eundem from St. Andrews in 1727, before he was elected a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Rather than immediately beginning to practice medicine, Cuninghame embarked on the Grand Tour in the summer of 1736. Over the next two years he enjoyed all the dining and society that his money and sparkling letters of introduction could afford him. The tour, alas, ended, and he returned and opened up a medical practice in Wales. In the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745, Cuninghame returned to Scotland permanently when he inherited title and estate through his maternal family. Thereafter he was known as Sir Alexander Dick, Baronet of Prestonfield. With his rise he quickly retired from his medical practice while remaining active in the Royal College of Physicians, elected as president annually from 1756-1763. Otherwise, he filled his day with experiments in plant cultivation (he was particularly intrigued by the benefits of rhubarb) and experimental agriculture (such as using sediment from his fish pond as manure). He received a steady stream of visitors eager for his company and famed hospitality, including Benjamin Franklin and later, with Franklin’s introduction, John Morgan. Later in life in turned to literary pursuits but much of his writing, like his memoir, were never published. (PI)