Aprit 1907,] PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. 261 
their clumsy hands came.” Left to himself, he had not much 
above an hour to dissect the subject when light failed, and 
all the time he had to work as best he could “amidst a 
Throng and Rabble,” and “in mighty hot weather.” Night 
fell and Sunday intervened, wherein no anatomist might 
work, at least in the open, and on Monday the “ mighty hot 
weather” had made itself apparent on the cadaver, and some 
of the parts had been carried away by the country people; 
however, thanks to the pains and care of Provost Yeaman, 
these parts were afterwards recovered, and ultimately Dr. Blair 
managed to elaborate, from the material he secured, an exhaus- 
tive paper, which, entitled “ Osteographia Elephantina,” with 
four large copperplates, filled over a hundred pages of the 
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1710. 
The article was published in a separate form in 1713, largely 
due to the fact that papers on the minute anatomy of the 
hair and skin of the same elephant were being read to the 
Society by Leeuwenhoek, the famous optician and microscopist. 
These sections had been secured by him when the animal was 
being exhibited in Holland. Dr. Blair, then M.D. and F.R.S., 
dedicates the book to Dr. John Arbuthnot. His plates, he 
says, “might have been finer done in London; but since I 
had the Original by me, whereby I was able from time to time 
to correct in the Engraving what Errors happened in drawing 
the Figures, I rather chose to have them done in Dundee.” 
The four plates bear that they are done at the expense of 
Patrick Blair, and that the engraver was Gilb. Oram. 
Taodunensis. Before leaving this part of the subject, it may 
be sufficient to say that Dr. T. Thomson, in his history of the 
Royal Society, speaks of Blair's paper as “a most surprising 
one. If we consider that all his observations were made from 
one animal, we must admit his exertions must have been 
uncommon and his address great to have made his account 
so minute as it is,” while the author of a paper on the 
elephant in the “Transactions” in the early years of the 
nineteenth century mentions Blair's account as “ wondertully 
accurate.” ! 
1 T have lately learned that Professor Boas, Copenhagen, who is at 
work on a monograph on the anatomy of the elephant, thinks very 
highly of Blair’s work, and has pointed out that certain points of 
anatomical structure were more correctly stated in his paper than by 
any observer who has written since. 
