Edinburgh’s University and Medical Schools in the Early Nineteenth Century

Edinburgh and its ancient university provided an important context for the reception of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. Much more socially and intellectually inclusive than the contemporary English universities, the open and tolerant atmosphere of the University of Edinburgh provided an atmosphere in which exciting new speculations on the natural world and man’s place in it could be debated and discussed by both professors and students. Outside the University, Edinburgh’s extra-mural anatomy schools were home to some of the most innovative thinkers in early nineteenth-century comparative anatomy, such as Robert Knox and Robert Grant. This chapter explores these institutions which played such a vital role in creating an atmosphere in which radical new ideas about the natural world could flourish.