William Burnett Douglas Miller (c. 1899 – 6 January 1970) MB ChB Glasgow 1923 was an orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy. Douglas Miller was House Surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and Demonstrator of Anatomy at Glasgow University, House Surgeon at the Manor House Hospital, and Assistant Surgeon at the London Homeopathic Hospital.

William Burnett Douglas Miller was a colleague of Edward Bach, Ardeshir Kavasji Boman Behram, Douglas Morris Borland, John Henry Clarke, Andrew Tocher Cunningham, Donald MacDonald Foubister, Clarence Granville Hey, James Douglas Kenyon, Jesse Dickson Mabon, Thomas Maughan, Elizabeth Paterson, John Paterson, Kathleen Gordon Priestman, Percival George Quinton, William Wilson Rorke, Margaret Lucy Tyler, Sir John Weir, Charles Edwin Wheeler, Harold Fergie Woods, Dudley d’Auvergne Wright, and many others.

William Burnett Douglas Miller was born in Dunipace, Scotland, in 1899, the son of Reverend William Douglas Miller (1868 – 1924), for twenty years the minister of Ruchill United Free Church, and soprano singer Agnes Cameron Adams (1872 – 1952)

Douglas Miller graduated in medicine, and worked for two years in Glasgow, then he went to the Antarctic in a ‘whaler’, and on his return to Britain, he was appointed House Surgeon at the Manor House Hospital for a year. He then travelled to Sarawak for a year, and on his return, he became Assistant Surgeon at the London Homeopathic Hospital.

In 1939, Douglas Miller joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and in 1940 he was in Norway in the thick of the fighting, eventually being evacuated back to Britain.

He joined Admiral Bertram Ramsay‘s staff to assist in the evacuation from Dunkirk, and he supervised training and exercises at Civil Defence until he was appointed Senior Medical Officer for Combined Operations. Another promotion to Fleet Medical Officer to Admiral Bertram Ramsay followed, where he helped to plan the medical side of the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and on the Normandy Beaches.

William Burnett Douglas Miller DSC, MB, ChB, RNVR, Acting Temporary Surgeon Commander, was mentioned in the dispatches on 2.10.1942.

After WWII, Douglas Miller served for ten years on the Lord Chancellor’s Pensions Appeals Tribunal, and for five years as Assistant Senior Medical officer to the South East Metropolitan Board.

Douglas Miller then retired. He died at his home, Strawberry Hole Cottage, Rye, Sussex, on 7 January 1970.

Of interest:

John Miller was on the Committee of the English Homeopathic Association in 1849.

Nora Miller (1898 – 1994), sister of William Burnett Douglas Miller, was a Scottish zoologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.