Scott became a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks in London. At the beginning of 1790 he responded to a request from Banks on the cotton industry with an extensive report.[2] Later that year he sent Banks samples of wootz steel.[3] He played a part in the founding of the botanical gardens in Bombay in 1791.[4]
Scott worked also as an agent for the local manufacture of gunpowder in Bombay, and spirits, from 1796.[5] On 24 July 1797 he was created M.D. by the University of Aberdeen.[1] In 1802 he carried out the first successful vaccination in Bombay.[6]
After thirty years in India, Scott returned to England, and began practice at Bath, Somerset. On 22 December 1815 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1817 began to practise as a physician in Russell Square, London. He attained to considerable practice, and died on 16 November 1821.[1] He was then at sea, on HMS Britomart, voyaging with two of his sons to Australia.[7]
In 1817 he contributed a paper to the Transactions of the Medico-Chirurgical Society on the use of nitromuriatic acid in medicine. Its frequent employment in the treatment of enteric fever and other maladies originated in his advocacy.[1]
Scott published a novel of circulation, The Adventures of a Rupee, in 1781.[8] Another novel was Helena, or the Vicissitudes of Military Life (1790).[9]
Scott married Augusta Maria, daughter of Colonel Charles Frederick. Their sons included Robert, Helenus, and Alexander Walker Scott.[7] One of the stained glass windows in the Garrison Church, Sydney, was installed in memory of Helenus and Augusta.[10]
^Robert Hadfield, A Research on Faraday's "Steel and Alloys", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character Vol. 230, (1932), pp. 221-292, at p. 225. Published by: The Royal Society. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/91231
^H. A. Young, The Indian Ordnance Factories and Indian Industries, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 72, No. 3715 (1 February 1924), pp. 175-188, at p. 180. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41356452
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Scott, Helenus". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
