Charles Murchison (26 July 1830 – 23 April 1879) was a British physician and a noted authority on fevers and diseases of the liver. Early life Murchison was born in Jamaica on 26 July 1830. He was a younger son of Alexander Murchison, M.D., cousin of Sir Roderick Impey Murchison. When Murchison was three years old, the family returned to Scotland and settled at Elgin, where he received his first education. At the age of fifteen, he entered the University of Aberdeen to study arts; two years later, he began studying medicine in the University of Edinburgh. There he distinguished himself in a range of subjects, obtaining a large number of medals and prizes. He especially excelled in surgery, and in 1850 he passed the examination of the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh when little over twenty years of age. In the same year he became house surgeon to James Syme. In 1851 he graduated M.D. with a dissertation on the "Pathology of tumours", based on his own experience, for which he was awarded a gold medal. He then spent a short time as physician to the British embassy at Turin, and, returning to Edinburgh, was for a short time resident physician in the Royal Infirmary. Career After further study in Dublin and Paris, Murchison entered the Bengal Army of the East India Company on 17 January 1853. On reaching India he was almost immediately made professor of chemistry at the Medical College, Calcutta. Later on, he served with the expedition to Burma in 1854, and his experience there furnished the materials for two papers in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for January and April 1855 on the "Climate and Diseases of Burmah". In October 1855, Murchison left the service and settled in London as a physician, commencing the long series of his medical appointments by becoming physician to the Westminster General Dispensary. Shortly afterwards he was connected with St. Mary's Hospital as lecturer on botany and as curator of the museum, of which he prepared in a remarkably short time an excellent catalogue. In 1856 he was appointed assistant physician to King's College Hospital but had to resign in 1860. Murchison had no difficulty in obtaining a similar position (combined with that of lecturer on pathology) at the Middlesex Hospital in the same year and, being promoted to the post of full physician in 1866, retained his connection with that