John Barclay, the son of Captain John Barclay, who had served in the Victory at Trafalgar, and brother of Andrew Whyte Barclay, Treasurer of the Royal College of Physicians, was born at Dysart in Fife and educated in Edinburgh, at the Royal High School and the University. After graduating in 1842, he visited the Continental medical schools before settling in practice at Leicester. There he held appointments at the Infirmary and Fever House, the Leicester and Rutland Counties Lunatic Asylum, and other asylums. During the Crimean War he served as senior physician to the Civil Hospital at Smyrna. He was said to be the first to introduce the stethoscope to his profession in Leicester. He took painstaking notes of all his cases, but published little. He lived in London after retiring. Barclay married a Miss Carsdale in 1854.

G H Brown

[Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1902, 15]