Aprit 1907.] PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. 259 
Parrick BLAIr, SURGEON APOTHECARY, DUNDEE. By Mr. 
ALEXANDER P. STEVENSON. Communicated by Professor 
BayLEy BALrour, F.R.S, 
When, on Friday, 25th January 1884, Professor Struthers, 
in the show-yard in East Dock Street, dissected the famous 
Tay whale, whose articulated skeleton now figures in the 
City Museum, I suspect very few knew or remembered 
that nearly two hundred years before another equally 
monstrous mammal underwent the same treatment, and its 
skeleton and counterfeit presentment figured in a Dundee 
“Hall of Rarities” of that period. I don’t know that the 
pomp and ceremony of the one dissection could be compared 
with the other, for in the former case there had been some 
attempt made to make the dissection possible and so far 
easy, and, in the words of the veracious reporter of the 
Dundee Advertiser, “the band of the lst Forfarshire Rifle 
Volunteers discoursed during the day airs of a lively and 
popular character, which undoubtedly rendered the proceed- 
ings less solemn than they might have been, and may have 
helped, as was remarked, ‘ to keep down the smell.’” In the 
other case, where the Dundee doctor and naturalist of whom 
I wish to tell you first comes to view, there was no arrange- 
ment of any kind; it was merely a fortunate accident, and 
his ready action and skilful hands and eyes, which made the 
dissection possible, and so it happened that “ the first elephant 
dissected in Great Britain’ was this Dundee specimen. 
The story,;I think, will prove interesting ; many details 
are given in the communication made to the Royal Society 
of London by the anatomist “Mr. Patrick Blair, Surgeon 
Apothecary, Dundee, Scotland.” 
Robert Chambers, in his “ Domestic Annals of Scotland,” 
gives 1680 as the year when the first elephant was seen in 
Scotland, and quotes from a contemporary writer a very 
quaint description of the “great beast” which was shown 
through the country, and which formed the subject of some 
litigation, those who farmed it out refusing to pay the fee 
of £400, “as it did not fulfil all the owners promised it 
would do,” to which they pleaded that it “could not drink 
every time it was shewn.” 
