Thomas Richard Fraser life and biography

Thomas Richard Fraser (1841–1920) was a British physician and pharmacologist.

Fraser made his studies at the University of Edinburgh and took his Ph.D. in 1862. In 1869 Fraser was a medical assistant professor at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In 1877 he was a member of an arctic expedition and later in 1877 was appointed professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In 1880 he was nominated Dean of the Medical Faculty.

In his later life he was both a consultant of insurance companies and of the Scottish Prisons Commission.

In 1869 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1877 member of the Royal Society. In 1889 and 1890 he reported about an arrow poison used in coastal areas of Kenya and Nigeria and analyzed the highly poisonous Calabar bean and Strophanthus hispidus.

From 1898 to 1899 he was president of the Government Commission for the research on the plague in India and in 1900 president of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. In 1902 he was knighted.

With his wife Susanna Margaret Duncan Fraser he had one son, Sir Francis Richard Fraser (1885–1964), who also became a Professor of Materia Medica in Edinburgh.

Publications
-The antagonism between the actions of active substances; British Medical journal, 1872
-On The Physiological Action Of The Calabar Bean, Physostigma Venenosum Balf.; Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, XXIV, 1867
-On the connexion between chemical constitution and physiological action; ibidem XXV
-On Stropanthus hispidus; ibidem XXXV
-An investigation into some previously undescribed tetanic symptoms produced by atropia in cold-blooded animals
-Strophanthus hispidus: its Natural History, Chemistry and Pharmacology. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. XXXV, 955-1028

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