One of the stories that Lord Cockburn tells of Gregory is in connection with Miss Sophia Johnston (generally known in the Edinburgh of that day as ‘Suphy’) one of the Hilton family; about whom, because of her curious upbringing, there were many odd stories. ‘When Suphy’s day was visibly approaching, Dr Gregory prescribed abstinence from animal food, and recommended “spoon-meat” unless she wished to die. “Dee, doctor, odd, I’m thinking they’ve forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder!” However, when he came back next day, the doctor found her at the spoon-meat, supping a haggis—she was remembered.’
Gregory lived now, as we know, in St Andrew Square, having left the old home in the Canongate, but besides this he bought a house called Canaan Lodge, which was then at a sufficient distance from Edinburgh to be in the real country. Walking towards this house he might often be seen of an evening with his all too warlike stick over his shoulder, possibly the very stick with which he smote his brother physician Professor Hamilton within the sacred precincts of the university. The story does not end here, nor even at the Law Courts, where he was made to pay £100 damages to the infuriated object of his attack, but with Gregory, who as usual had the last word, and the last laugh in the matter, and said as he paid his fine, that he would willingly pay double for another chance.
‘A’ the country, far and near,
Hae heard Macgregor’s fame, lady.
He was a hedge about his friends,
A heckle to his foes, lady;
If any man did him gainsay,
He felt his deadly blows, lady.
It is really a pity, but no sketch of Professor James Gregory could be adequate without mentioning some of the more important of his professional feuds. Take the Infirmary for example, with which he was connected from so early a date as 1777, and where he made one of the most sweeping and necessary reforms that have ever taken place in the management of that institution. He early saw that it was neither for the good of the patients, nor for the good of the students, that the physicians and surgeons should attend the wards for only a month at a time, and against this he set himself with all the zeal of which he was capable. He disapproved the time-honoured privilege enjoyed by every member of the Royal College of Physicians, and every member of the Royal College of Surgeons, to doctor the Infirmary patients; and getting more and more enraged with the infatuation of his medical brethren, he presented a memorial to the managers of the Infirmary, expounding his views, that Infirmary appointments should be made either for life, or at least for a number of years, but unfortunately doing so in language, of which the following paragraph is but one specimen:—
‘Let us suppose that in consequence of this memorial, every individual member of the College of Surgeons shall to his own share, make forty times more noise than Orlando Furioso did at full moon when he was maddest, and shall continue in that unparalleled state of uproar for twenty years without ceasing. I can see no great harm in all that noise, and no harm at all to any but those who make it. Ninety-nine parts in the hundred of all that noise would of course be bestowed on me, whom it would not deprive of one hour’s natural sleep, and to whom it would afford infinite amusement and gratification while I am awake,’ etc.