Alexander Philip Wilson, Scottish physician and physiologist, was born at Sheethall near Glasgow. In 1811, he changed his surname from Wilson to Philip by Royal License when he succeeded to the chieftanship of his clan on the death of his paternal grandmother, Susannah Wilson. He received his primary education at the Edinburgh High School and, when he was 12, was placed in the hands of William Cullen for his higher education.1 Wilson proceeded in the preparation for medicine to the University of Edinburgh; there he was a pupil of Monro secundus, Black, Home, Cullen, and others. The doctorate was bestowed in 1792 upon presentation of a thesis, entitled De Dyspepsia, prepared in Latin. He received his final training in London at St. George's Hospital and attended the lectures of Matthew Baillie, who befriended him later in some of his bitter polemics with distinguished medical scientists.
Wilson returned to Edinburgh