James Wardrop

James Wardrop or Wardrope (1782–1869) was a Scottish surgeon and ophthalmologist. Surgeon to King George IV and responsible for being the first to describe a retinoblastoma and uveal melanoma. And coining the term 'keratitis'.

Wardrop was born on 14 August 1782, the youngest son of James Wardrop (1738-1830) and his wife, Christian Marjoribanks, at Torbane Hill, in Bathgate, West Lothian, a family estate where the Wardrops had lived for several generations. But at four years of age moved with the family to live in Edinburgh where he attended the High School, and then St Andrews University.

Wardrop’s father had initially pursued legal studies, but abandoned them at the age of 20 following the death of his own father. Wardrop's mother, Christian, died in childbirth a year after his birth. She was the sister of Alexander Marjoribanks, owner of Balbardie House, an Adam-style mansion in Bathgate.

In 1786, when James was four years old, the Torbane hill estate was put up for sale. The family then relocated to a residence in south Edinburgh overlooking The Meadows.

Wardrop began his education at the High School in Edinburgh before the age of seven. At the time, the school had an enrollment of around 570 pupils, making it the largest in the United Kingdom. Under the rectorship of Dr. Alexander Adam, the curriculum focused heavily on Greek and Latin.

Among Wardrop’s contemporaries at the High School were several notable figures, including Adam Black (later MP and Lord Provost of Edinburgh), James Abercromby (Speaker of the House of Commons), and the brothers Leonard and Francis Horner. Another classmate, Andrew Geddes, went on to become a portrait painter and later painted portraits of both James Wardrop (now housed in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh) and his father (held in the Aberdeen Art Gallery).

Although initially intended for a naval career, Wardrop developed a strong interest in natural history, which ultimately led him to pursue medicine. In 1800, at the age of 18, on the same day as James Keith he was apprenticed to a leading firm of surgeon apothecaries in Edinburgh, which included Benjamin Bell, James Russell and his great uncle Andrew Wardrop, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and in 1801 was appointed House Surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Three months earlier, the surgeon apothecaries accepted John Henry Wishart of Foxhall, to whom Wardrop would later dedicate one of his books.

Wardrop studied anatomy under Alexander Monro secundus and John Barclay at an extra-mural school in Edinburgh. He was appointed house surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, then located in the William Adam-designed building on Infirmary Street. During his tenure there, he famously performed a thigh amputation on a young patient to assess whether he had the temperament necessary for surgical practice.