Aprin.1907,] PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. 263 
Fife, opposite Dundee, in 1694, when “there was a great famine 
in Scotland, so that the poor People gathered what kind of 
ereen Herbs they could get and made a green Broth, sprinkling 
some Oatmeal amongst them, the Farmer’s family used the 
Cynoglossum marinum procumbens (which is found plentifully 
as you go to Naughton, among the dry pebbly or channelly 
Sand),” taking it for Colewort, with disastrous consequences. 
He says this was reported to him, as he “was then in 
the Low Countries for my further Improvement in my 
Profession.” 
He details surgical cases with which he had to do in Flanders 
in 1695 and 1697, the results of fighting, duelling, and 
accidents ; and in his botanical reminiscences, he speaks of this 
or that plant having been seen by him growing profusely 
near Ghent, in Flanders, or near Vilvorde, in Brabant, and 
at other places. Huis intimate acquaintanee with the work 
of Continental botanists would also seem to indicate that 
his wander years abroad had been somewhat prolonged. 
In 1706, as we have seen, he is in Dundee; but from the 
position he then held it would be safe to assume that he 
had been some considerable time in practice.! In a poisoning 
case, he was asked by the magistrates to open the body, and, 
with other physicians in town, was swbpenaed to the trial in 
Edinburgh. I have tried to find the date of this case, and 
of the trial, but have failed ; it would be subsequent to 1702, 
however. It forms the substance of a letter Blair wrote 
to Dr. Richard Mead, in which he indicates how useful Mead’s 
book on the “ Mechanical Action of Poisons” had been. ‘The 
death was caused by arsenical poisoning, and the methods 
1 Bower, in his “ History of the University of Edinburgh,” referring 
to Blair as an “eminent philosopher who has been most unaccountably 
neglected in Scotland,” proves that he was settled in Dundee in 1701. 
He quotes an advertisement from the “ Edinburgh Gazette,” of 29th 
September of that year, in which Mr. Blair, who designates himself 
** surgeon-apothecary in Dundee,” proposes to publish a “ Manuductio ad 
Anatomiam, or a plain and easy method of dissecting, preparing, or 
preserving all the parts of the body of man, either for public demon- 
stration or the satisfaction of private curiosity.” The work was then 
ready for the press, and, upon suitable encouragement, would shortly be 
published. I suspect the encouragement was not forthcoming, and 
consequently the work never reached the press or the public. Writing 
to Petiver, of date 8th February 1709, Dr. Blair mentions the work as 
one of several treatises that he has by him, “ which in time | design ta 
expose to (the) publick.” Sloane, MSS. 3321. 
