Arthur Edmondston

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Arthur Edmondston, doctor and author of A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands (2 vols., 1809), two treatises on opthalmia, and other works. He was born on the 10th of November, 1775, the eldest son of Laurence Edmondston (b. 5.8.1740), merchant in Fetlar, and Mary Sanderson (b. 6.3.1751) of Buness House, Unst.

Edmondston studied medicine in Edinburgh, becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He then served as an army surgeon in Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby, and subsequently settled in Lerwick, where he was a well-known and notoriously litigous figure. He was the uncle of Thomas Edmondston and Jessie M. E. Saxby.

Arthur Edmondston also published Observations on the nature and extent of the cod fishery carried on off the coasts of the Zetland and Orkney Islands, Edinburgh, 1820.

He died on the 17th February, 1841 in Lerwick.