William Pulteney Alison FRSE FRCPE FSA (12 November 1790 – 22 September 1859) was a Scottish physician, social reformer and philanthropist. He was a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He served as president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh (1833), president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1836–38), and vice-president of the British Medical Association, convening its meeting in Edinburgh in 1858. Life Alison was born in Boroughmuirhead on 12 November 1790, eldest son of Dorothea Gregory and Reverend Archibald Alison, the elder brother of the advocate Archibald Alison; and godson of Laura Pulteney, 1st Countess of Bath. In his youth he climbed Mont Blanc and other mountains as a pastime. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1803, and studied under his father's friend Dugald Stewart, and for a time was expected to follow a career in philosophy rather than medicine. In 1811 he graduated as a physician. In 1814 he opened the New Town Dispensary at 4 East James Street, at the east end of the city's New Town. His academic career was impressive. He became a Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in 1820. From 1822 to 1842 he lectured in the Institutes of Medicine. From 1842 to 1856 he lectured in the Theory of Physic. His Edinburgh townhouse was at 43 Heriot Row in the Edinburgh's Second New Town. In 1821 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club. He was President of the Royal College of Physicians 1836–8, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1833, and Vice President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1842–59. His uncle was Professor James Gregory and his cousin was Professor William Gregory. Ameliorating the lot of the poor Struck by the poverty he encountered, Alison advocated poor relief in Scotland be extended from the sick and infirm to include the healthy impoverished. This was a radical suggestion as the ethos of the age was for poor relief to be withheld from the able-bodied destitute who were presumed to be indolent and sinful. Published in his report on the generation of fever in English reformer Edwin Chadwick's “Report on the sanitary condition of the laboring population,” despite the general feeling of many physicians at the time, Alison was of the opinion that malarias, or diseases, were not a result of putrescent animal and vegetable matters or human excretions,