Alexander McDonald

Alexander McDonald (or M'Donald) (15 September 1817 – ) was a Scottish physician who served as assistant surgeon of HMS Terror on Franklin's lost expedition. Early life Alexander McDonald was born on 15 September 1817 in Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire, Scotland, to Robert McDonald and Elizabeth Stiven. His father was a silver snuff-box maker, apprentice to Charles Stiven. McDonald attended The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and graduated in 1838. Career To pay for medical school, McDonald spent his summers serving as ship's surgeon for Captain William Penny in the whaling industry. In 1839, Penny brought an Inuk traveler, Eenoolooapik, back with him to Scotland, and McDonald was introduced to the man and served both as his tutor and as his doctor when he contracted a respiratory infection. The next year when they returned to the Arctic, Eenoolooapik guided them to the whale-rich Tenudiakbeek inlet, which Penny christened Hogarth's Sound (now known to be a rediscovery of Cumberland Sound). In 1841, McDonald published a biography of Eenoolooapik which recounted the events of their voyage, A narrative of some passages in the history of Eenoolooapik, a young Esquimaux, who was brought to Britain in 1839, in the ship "Neptune" of Aberdeen: an account of the discovery of Hogarth's Sound: remarks on the northern whale fishery, and suggestions for its improvement, &c. &c.