James Alexander Lindsay (physician)

After education at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and at the Methodist College Belfast, James Alexander Lindsay matriculated at Queen’s College Belfast, where he graduated in 1877 B.A. and in 1878 M.A. in ancient classics. In 1882 he obtained the M.D. and M.Ch. degrees in the Royal University of Ireland.[4]

After two years of working in clinics in London, in Paris, and in Vienna, he returned to Belfast. At the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, he was appointed in 1884 assistant physician and in 1888 full physician,[1] retiring as consulting physician in 1921. From 1919 to 1927 he was chair of the board of management of the Royal Victoria Hospital. From 1899 to 1924 he held the chair of medicine in Queen’s University Belfast.[2] In the chair of medicine he was preceded by James Cuming (1833–1899)[5] and succeeded by William Willis Dalziel Thomson.[6]

In 1897–1898 Lindsay was president of the Ulster Medical Society.[7] In 1903 he was elected FRCP.[2] In 1909 he delivered the Bradshaw Lecture.[8]

He belonged to the school of physicians who concentrated on accurate diagnosis, and that with the aid of his own senses and acumen, but had little interest in medical treatment; he never took up such artificial aids as electrocardiography, although it has to be said in his defence that he learned how to identify the waves defined by Einthoven. This pedantic approach was crystallised in the instruction cards of technique for examination of patients that he published. His lectures also were precise and old-fashioned, delivered at dictation speed throughout, to provide notes for future reference, as was common until good textbooks became more freely available in the 1950s.[1]

Gifted with a mind at once scholarly and judicial, Lindsay believed that the teacher’s function was to instruct the student how to learn and how to think. He was prominent in the cultural life of Belfast and found his recreation in music, golf, mountaineering and watching cricket. He died, a bachelor, in Belfast.[2]

He was a member of the Aristotleian Society, and the author of valuable medical treatises, and of many contributions to the professional and philosophical journals. He also published a history of The Lindsay Family in Ireland.[4]

His nephew, Royal Navy Captain D. C. Lindsay, was High Sheriff of Belfast for the year 1931. J. A. Lindsay and his nephew were descendants of James Lindsay, who fled from religion persecution in Ayrshire in 1678.[4]

• "Lindsay, James Alexander" . Thom's Irish Who's Who . Dublin: Alexander Thom and Son Ltd. 1923. p. 137  – via Wikisource.