8 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
of ceremonious meetings and printing lists of dignified office- 
bearers. With a reticence which we all must regret, the six 
volumes of Medical Essays give no clue to the constitution of the 
Society, the nature or frequency of its meetings, the names of the 
presidents, nor even of the diligent secretary by whom, no doubt, 
its Proceedings w^ere edited.* 
I think I am entitled to assume that the papers were fully equal 
in point of merit to those contributed on medical subjects to the 
Royal Society of London, or any similar institution. They went 
through more editions than one, were translated into foreign lan- 
guages, and were highly commended by the celebrated Haller. It 
is reasonable to believe that the wide reputation of the Edin- 
burgh Medical School dates from the publication of these im- 
portant Essays. 
In a paper on the Climate of Edinburgh, which I contributed a 
few years ago to the Royal Society’s Transactions,! I have brought 
into view the early meteorological observations contained in the 
Medical Essays, though by whom they were made does not ap- 
pear. 
The six volumes of Medical Essays terminated in 1744. In 
1737, at the suggestion of the celebrated Maclaurin, the objects of 
the Society had already been extended so as to include general 
science and literature.^ It had not existed for many years in this 
form before political troubles antecedent to and during the insurrec- 
tion of 1745-6 seriously impaired its usefulness, and probably pre- 
vented the separate publication of its Transactions, which was from 
the first contemplated.§ The death of Maclaurin, in J une 1746, which 
^ An incidental notice, however, in the Introduction to the first volume of 
the Royal Society’s Transactions, informs us that the secretary was the first 
Professor Monro, who was also a large contributor to the Essays. 
t Vol. xxii. p. 327. 
X The date usually assigned is 1739. But from two letters of Maclaurin 
printed in the “ Scots’ Magazine ” for June 1804, the earlier date is certainly 
correct. Mr David Laing has shown me a pamphlet (of sixteen quarto pages) 
containing the Regulations of the Society and a List of Members. The List 
of Members is dated 1739; but at page 3, the first Thursday of December 
1737 is fixed as the first day of meeting. 
§ The papers read at the Society were in part printed in the later volumes 
of the Medical Essays, in the Philosophical Transactions, and in Maclaurin' s 
Fluxions. It appears from a notice in Mr R. Chambers’s Domestic Annals (vol. 
