1798 - 1882

Andrew Buchanan was Professor of Physiology at Glasgow for 37 years, and has been described as one of the most outstanding of the pioneer investigators of blood coagulation. In a series of experiments Buchanan extracted the fibrin ferment of blood, and showed that it was capable of coagulating blood and other serous fluids not in themselves coagulable. The fundamental discoveries he made regarding the mechanism of blood coagulation were the basis for all subsequent research on the subject.

In 1828 (after much difficulty established) Dr. Buchanan established the "Glasgow Medical Journal" - a magazine which still flourishes as the organ of the profession in the West of Scotland. He was the first editor (along with the late Dr. Weir), but some papers of his on the medical management of the poor got him into such trouble as to cause him to resign his connection with the journal and also his post as a district surgeon. So violent was the opposition his articles stirred up that he says "the door was closed against me to all public medical appointments, which younger men were passed over my head to fill."

Dr. Buchanan was a ready and effective writer. His contributions on physiological and surgical subjects are very numerous, and lie scattered through many journals. The blood, its properties and reactions, its coagulation and constitution, the forces which carry it on, and its state in cholera, occupied him for many years.

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