Douglas Morris Borland M.B. Ch.B. (22 March 1885 – 29 November 1960) was an influential Scottish homeopathic physician. He studied with James Tyler Kent in Chicago, making him among the first to bring Kentian homeopathy to England.

Douglas Borland began and ended his career at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. For many years, he was Chairman of the hospital staff, and a member of the Board. He was a member of the British Homeopathic Society, and served as President in the 1930s.

Among his students and colleagues were such figures as Margery Grace Blackie, Kathleen Gordon Priestman, Frank Bodman, and Stuart McAusland.

Douglas Morris Borland was born in Glasgow in 1885, the son of a well-known local lawyer, William Borland (1842 – 1903) and his wife Jane Govan Morris McArthur (1858 – 1943).

Borland received his education at the Glasgow Academy, before proceeding to the University of Glasgow, from where he obtained his bachelors degree in medicine and surgery in 1909.

Borland and Sir John Weir were both recipients of the Margaret Tyler Kent scholarship, allowing them to study with the proponent of high potency remedies, James Tyler Kent, at the Hering Medical College in Chicago.

It is unclear when and how Borland first encountered homeopathy but, according to royal homeopath Margery Grace Blackie, in her memorial of Borland, in 1913, he joined the medical staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. However, Blackie’s dating was inaccurate, Borland already being on staff as House Physician in April 1912. He would remain a lifelong homeopath, and associated with the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, for the rest of his career.

At the outbreak of war, in 1914, Borland joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in France, Salonica, and Armenia, rising to the rank of Captain.

In the early 1930s, Borland supervised Kathleen Gordon Priestman during her post as resident at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.

Borland also lectured at the hospital alongside Charles Edwin Wheeler, and he taught future royal homeopath Margery Grace Blackie, who wrote of him:

“A giant among doctors.” Borland was a “born doctor”, she said, and eminently suited to be a homeopath, because he was always interested in the whole person – body, mind and spirit, so much so that there had been a time when he was undecided whether to go into the Church or into medicine.

At a first meeting Dr. Borland (who was a Scot from Glasgow) often gave an impression of aloofness. But this was only a mask for his shyness. Behind it there was an utterly charming, gentle, and generous personality.”

Borland, along with other leading homeopaths such as Margaret Lucy Tyler and John Weir, contributed to the 1938 Post-graduate Correspondence Course in Homeopathy that was created by the British Homoeopathic Association.

In her memorial tribute to Borland, Margery Grace Blackie described his unrivaled therapeutic abilities:

He had a marvellous gift of never seeming to be in a hurry. He might have a notice on the desk, saying 5 new and 60 old patients, but each patient left feeling that he or she was the one he was really interested in; he had listened to everything they had to say and understood. It was an education in itself to hear him take a history. He seldom if ever asked direct questions, but got the answers he wanted by various means. He seemed to know instinctively what class of person he was dealing with, from their appearance, their entering, the way they sat down and started to talk. If it was a Pulsatilla type, it only needed a few sympathetic, understanding words and the whole story poured forth. To another type he might pretend to misunderstand what they meant, or make a remark that annoyed, and again he would get his story. Many a patient have I taken to him in despair, only to hear symptoms pouring out while he seemed only to sit and listen and made it quite easy for me now to prescribe! Why didn’t the patient give me the history? That was Dr. Borland’s secret of successful prescribing–a great knowledge of the drugs, combined with abundant sympathy and understanding of the patient.

Blackie also wrote a poem in honour of Borland, in which she described her first hand experience of his diagnostic prowess:

And I was recommended then
To Dr. Borland, best of men.
He sat me down upon a chair
And started with an absorbing stare.

I felt his eyes investigate
The deepest secrets of my state …
His stare bored down into my heart,
I felt the perspiration start –

My feet, my knees, my hands, my head,
All shook with a consuming dread …
Oh! What a power for a physician
To know by force of intuition
His patient’s scandalous condition.

When I had almost ceased to hope
I thought I saw his fingers grope
And from his pocket came to light
A tiny powder wrapped in white.

One sinewy arm he forward flung
And placed that powder on my tongue –
Scarce had I swallowed the contents
I felt its marvellous influence –

I ceased to sweat, I ceased to shake
I ceased to gibber and to quake.
I felt as certain as old Nick
That Dr. B. had done the trick.
What an experience indeed
For one so long an invalid!

At the outbreak of World War II, Borland became Governor of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital under the Emergency Medical Service.

He lived in the hospital and gave himself unstintedly until his health suffered permanently before the end of the war. He retired from active hospital work, but until his death he was keenly interested in, and kept abreast of all that was still happening there, and was able to help from time to time with advice, from his long experience of the Hospital’s affairs.

He was taken ill suddenly about two weeks before he died in November, while going through his old lectures, as there had been many requests from young doctors that they might be printed. These unfortunately were not finished, but we have the rough notes and hope to publish them in future, numbers of the JOURNAL. Then those yet unborn will have a chance to benefit, and revere his name and genius, as well as those of us who knew and learned from him himself.

Select Publications: