Patrick Russell, physician and naturalist, worked in Syria and India in the employ of the Levant Company and the East India Company (EIC), respectively. He was an authority on bubonic plague and Indian snakes.

Russell was born one of five brothers in Edinburgh, where his father was a lawyer. He also had half-siblings from his father's previous marriages. After qualifying in the medical profession, in 1750 he went to join one of these, Alexander Russell, a physician with the Levant Company in Aleppo. The brothers spent much of their spare time studying the plants and wildlife of the region and together published The Natural History of Aleppo (1756). Alexander left Aleppo in 1753 and Patrick succeeded him in his post.

Patrick remained in Syria until 1771, dealing with several outbreaks of plague and building up considerable experience in his field. His reputation in Aleppo was such that he was privileged by the local pasha, who allowed him to wear a turban. He returned to Britain via Italy and France, visiting the Mediterranean quarantine lazarettos, and set up practice in London, where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1777.

Russell once more accompanied one of his family members abroad in 1781, when his younger brother Claud was appointed administrator of Vizagapatam, India. Russell was appointed physician and botanist to the East India Company at Madras in 1785, in which capacity he made large natural history collections over the next four years, especially of plants and fish. He also produced drawings and written works, such as his 1787 account of the poisonous snakes of the Coromandel Coast, and continued his studies into the plague, resulting in his 1791 Treatise on the Plague.

Departing India in January 1789, Russell deposited his collections of plants and fish with the EIC in Madras. His next significant publication was an enlarged edition of The Natural History of Aleppo (1794). He also provided the preface for William Roxburgh's 1795 work, Plants of the Coast of Coromandel. This lavish work was printed at the expense of the EIC, which also paid for Russell's illustrated folio publication, An Account of Indian Serpents Collected on the Coast of Coromandel (1796-1809). In 1803 he published Descriptions and Figures of Two Hundred Fishes; Collected at Vizagapatam in two folio volumes.

Russell died in 1805 at his house in Weymouth Street, London, after a brief illness. He never married.

Sources:
G.S. Boulger, rev. M. Harrison, 2010, "Russell, Patrick (1727-1805)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24334, accessed 21 March 2012
M.H. van den Boogert, 2010, Aleppo observed: Ottoman Syria through the eyes of two Scottish doctors, Alexander and Patrick Russell
I.C. Hedge and J.M. Lamond, 1987, "Edinburgh's Indian botanical connections and collections", Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India, 29(1-4): 272-285
J.C.M. Starkey, 2002, "No myopic mirage: Alexander and Patrick Russell in Aleppo", History and Anthropology, 13(4): 264-266.