Allan Burns , He may have been an earlier brother. M.D., surgeon, of Glasgow. Eminent Scottish anatomist of the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow. He formed the collection of anatomical preparations later known as The Burns Collection. Looking at what remains of this eighteenth-century specimen collection, said to originally number in the hundreds, one can hardly imagine the time and great effort taken to detail the anatomical structure in less than the best of circumstances. Not only do we see the relationships and the complexity of the communicating bone, organ, muscle, nerve, tendon, and fiber of tissue, but we view the skill of Burns as a dissector-preparator, artfully casting and adding colors into areas of specific interest. Burns's special interest in the heart and vascular system is given emphasis in his preparations. Preservation meant desiccation, the removal of water from the tissue to prevent autolysis and accompanying putrefaction. The specimens were mummified by a salt and sugar cure process; the exact manner and method are unknown. Many of the Burns Museum specimens survive today. For the past 25 years, the collection has been held in safe, secluded, and secure storage within the anatomical facilities. For decades prior to that, specimens rested in glass cabinets and were viewed with amazement as oddities by students as they entered the dissection lab. (http://www.umm.edu/bulletin/summer99/feature-2.html) Allan Burns was small and boyish looking; indeed, in 1797 at the age of 16 he was in charge of the dissecting rooms at the College Street Medical School in Glasgow, Scotland. The school was not part of the university offering the medical degree, so Allan did not have a qualification for surgery from Glasgow University. Degree or no, Burns was a skilled dissector. He developed special preparations on the bodies in the laboratory, paying special attention to the vascular system. Burns's ligament (the falciform margin of the saphenous opening of the thigh), the Space of Burns (the jugular fossa in the temporal bone of the skull), and two classic anatomy textbooks (Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck (1811) and Observations of Diseases of the Heart (1809)) evidence other significant contributions by Allan Burns in this early era of medicine. Burns was invited by the Empress Catherine of Russia for a year to set up a hospital along the British design. Upon his return, he learned that his brother John had been prosecuted for grave robbery and his teaching activities barred. Allan Burns gave lectures in anatomy and surgery. In 1809, Granville Sharpe Pattison, at age 18, joined Burns as his assistant and demonstrator, working with him until Burns's death in 1813. Burns died at age 32 of an abdominal abscess, as determined by an immediate autopsy by Pattison and Andrew Russel, Burns's senior associate. Burns had bequeathed to Pattison the copyrights of all his works. In time, Pattison revised and expanded Burns's original texts and included a number of case histories. Burns had bequeathed his anatomical specimens to Andrew Russel, who had assisted in their preparation. As the sole proprietor, Russel had sold an interest in the collection to Pattison, who replaced Burns as the lecturer and demonstrator of anatomy and surgery at the College. In 1814, Pattison, a 22-year-old professor, acquired full title to the collection when Russel sold his interest to Pattison and emigrated to the United States. Armed with the Burns Museum, Pattison could distinguish himself in Glasgow, London, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where in 1820 the remains of the specimen collection were given a permanent home at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
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| Born: 1781 | Baptised: Barony, Lanark., , Scotland 23rd Sep 1781
| | Died: 1813 | Buried:
| | Family: Burns |
Sources
- Family Archivists: see
Burns
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Timeline
| 1781 | Born (birth) | | 23rd Sep 1781 | Baptised (baptism) Barony, Lanark., Scotland | | 1813 | Died (death) | | 1813 | UNMAR/ROLE INDI |
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