264 PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. [Sess. uxxr. 
which nowadays can actually collect the arsenic used on 
the tissues being then unknown, the medical men had to 
rely upon the fact that the conditions the post-mortem 
revealed were those which followed the action of arsenic, 
aud they appealed to Dr. Mead’s book as justifying their 
statements, and the judge accepted their finding. 
Next we find Dr. Blair in correspondence with Sir Hans 
Sloane, interested in his collections and the Royal Society, 
of which at that time Sloane was secretary. Then came 
the episode of the elephant, and a correspondence with 
Sloane’s friend and co-worker, the apothecary, naturalist, 
and collector, Mr. James Petiver. These were the days 
when earth and sea, at home and abroad, were being searched 
for their natural history productions of every kind, the out- 
come of which, so far as the plant world was concerned, was 
the Method or Classification that would arrange, co-relate, or 
identify the finds, and which, through Morison the Scotsman, 
Ray the Englishman, and Tournefort the Frenchman, led up 
to the great system of Linneus. Blair preferred Tournefort 
to Ray, but admired the Aberdonian Morison still more. 
He preferred Morison, writes a friend, somewhat caustically, 
‘with more nationality than judgment.” We have seen how 
the elephant was dissected and the account sent on to Sloane 
for the information of the Royal Society. This also led to the 
formation of a Natural History Society in Dundee. Blair 
engaged the “interest of several honourable and learned 
Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood, and the Physicians and 
Surgeons in Dundee, to use all means for Improvement in the 
Natural History.” They erected a public hall, at their own 
private charges, to hold their collections, with which, writing 
to Petiver, July 26th, 1708, he says they have come a good 
length, and had established a Physic Garden, whereof he was 
overseer. In this hall was stored the stuffed skin and the 
mounted skeleton of the elephant.’ 
Some paragraphs in the “St. Andrews University Bulletin,” 
quoting from the University minutes, show the doctor was in 
request for his skill as a working naturalist. 
1 Blair, when sending Petiver “an guinea for the treatise you design, 
whereof in your last,” asked him to “design me in the subserip- 
tions, Fellow of the Society for natural improvements of Dundee,” 
(Sloane, MSS. 3321). 
