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flourished as physicians in Islay, Mull, and Skye for many generations. By 

 piecing together notices in records aud charters, inscriptions, tradition which 

 seem well founded, geneological tables in the University Library MS., and a 

 printed history and genealogy of the Bethunes of Skye, a condensed account of 

 these remarkable men was given. Beath came from Ireland, tradition says, in 

 the train of Widow O'Neill, who married Angus Og of the Isles, the friend of 

 Bruce. Macdonald, who kept up an organised administration in Islay, 

 appointed this man, or one of his descendants, chief physician of the Isles, 

 endowed the office handsomely, and established it in his family. In the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century, Campbell of Cawdor got possession of 

 Islay. Fergus Macbeth was at the time chief physician of the Isles. He 

 obtained a Crown charter from King James VI. confirming him in the office for 

 life, and in the lands pertaining to the office hereditarily as they were held by 

 his ancestors "beyond the memory of man." This valuable document is 

 preserved among the Argyll papers, and is to be printed for the first time in 

 the valuable "Book of Islay," about to be published under the editorship of 

 Mr. Gregory Smith, of the University. A Farchard "Leche," who received 

 a grant of the lands of Melness and Hope in Sutherland from the Wolf of 

 Badenoch, and of all the islands from Rhue Stoer in Assynt to Armadale Head 

 in Farr, from King Robert II., was, it appears, a distinguished member of the 

 Islay Macbeths. A branch of the family settled in Mull as physicians to 

 Maclean of Duart. The tomb of Dr. John Beaton, who died in 1657, is in 

 Iona. It was erected by Donald Beaton in 1674, as the Latin inscription 

 bears. The Skye Bethunes claim descent from Bethune of Balfour, in Fife, the 

 uncle of Cardinal Beaton. Their history was written in 1778 by the Rev. 

 Thomas White, of Liberton, who married a lady of the family. The Bethunes 

 figure largely as clergymen, soldiers, tacksmen, and especially doctors, in Skye 

 and neighbourhood, for the last 300 years. Little is known of where these 

 men received their professional education, where they got their medicines, and 

 how they prepared them. It would seem that for the most part they were 

 educated at home, and, if tradition may be relied upon, that they largely culti- 

 vated medicinal plants, and made up their drugs mainly from these. No 

 scientific value attaches, of course, to these documents now ; but considerable 

 historical and literary interest is claimed for them and their authors. To the 

 teaching of this remarkable race of men is probably due the wide diffusion of 

 a knowledge of simples among the people of the Isles — not to speak of the 

 charms and incantations with which the application of the salves used to be 

 accompanied. It was pointed out that the belief was universal in the southern 

 Isles that consumption was not only hereditary but infectious — a dogma learned 

 from Hippocrates by these Macbeaths, with whose writings they were well 

 acquainted, and very probably transmitted through them to the inhabitants of 

 Islay and Mull. The Professor concluded by observing- that the life and 

 labours of these distinguished men formed a pleasing and valuable chapter, 

 still to be written in the history of the Hebrides, while the fact — which King 

 James IV. 's charter puts beyond question — that the Government of the Isles 

 under the Macdonalds charged itself with a care of the public health, adds not 

 a little to the credit of that princely house. 

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