William Mackenzie (ophthalmologist)

William Mackenzie (ophthalmologist)

William Mackenzie (April 1791 – July 1868) was a Scottish ophthalmologist. He wrote Practical Treatise of the Diseases of the Eye, one of the first British textbooks of ophthalmology.

Mackenzie was born in Queen Street, Glasgow, and studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. From 1815 to 1818 he studied in London and continental Europe. He obtained his MD under Georg Joseph Beer at the University of Vienna, and returned to Britain in 1818. In 1819, he settled in Glasgow and began practice as a physician. In this year he also he took up the anatomy chair at Anderson's College Medical School. With George Monteath, the chief oculist of Glasgow, he founded the Glasgow Eye Infirmary in 1824. He was appointed Waltonian lecturer and lecturer on diseases of the eye at the University of Glasgow in 1828, and wrote Practical Treatise of the Diseases of the Eye, which became a standard text after its first edition was published in 1830. This text may include the first discussion of the increase of pressure in the eye during glaucoma. Mackenzie also served as editor of the Glasgow Medical Journal for two years.

MacKenzie was the mentor of Thomas Wharton Jones, leading to a significant scientific genealogy including physicists such as Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.