SIR ROBERT SIBBALD. 
25 
October 30, 1662, having been absent two years 
and a half. Here he found his younger brother 
George suffering severely from a dislocation of 
the spine, occasioned by a person, in play, tossing 
him over his shoulder five years before, a practice 
too common, but highly reprehensible. In this 
poor child’s case, it produced an abscess j which, 
after years of acute pain, terminated fatally in 
the fifteenth year of his age. 
The young physician, with great prudence, 
settled at his mother’s house, determined to live 
as economically as possible, as his means were 
limited by a liferent his mother possessed out 
of his father’s property. His father had been 
compelled by the misfortune at Dundee to incur 
some debts, which were undischarged at his death ; 
which his son, with a high sense of honour, deter* 
mined to discharge. To encourage such laudable 
moderation, he studied Seneca and Epictetus, and 
other of the Stoics, which ho “ affected !” because 
of their contempt of riches and honours. “ The 
design,” he tells us, “ which he proposed to 
himself, was to pass quietly through the world, 
and content himself with a moderate fortune.” 
With this resolution, he commenced practice 
among his friends, and refused fees from the 
poor ; but courted the acquaintance of surgeons 
and apothecaries, “ carrying himself with a great 
deal of deference and respect to them,” for the 
