DR. ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN
From an Engraving after Sir John Medina
I have gone somewhat out of my way to complete the story of the resurrectionist times. I return to an earlier period with a note on the Royal Infirmary. The great evil of the body-snatching incidents was that it brought into disrepute and odium the profession towards which the public felt kindly and to which they have been so greatly indebted for unpaid, unselfish, and devoted service. During nearly two hundred years the great Edinburgh hospital known as “The Royal Infirmary” has borne witness to the labours in the public cause of the Edinburgh doctors. The story of its inception is creditable to the whole community. It was opened in 1729 on a very humble scale in a small house. A charter was granted by George II. in 1736, and on the 2nd August 1738 the foundation-stone of a great building was laid to the east of the college near the old High School. The whole nation helped: the proprietors of stone quarries sent stone and lime; timber merchants supplied wood; the farmers carried materials; even day labourers gave the contribution of their labour, all free of charge. Ladies collected money in assemblies, and from every part of the world help was obtained from Scotsmen settled in foreign parts. Such is the old Royal Infirmary. When it was unable further to supply the wants of an ever-increasing population and the requirements of modern science, the new Royal Infirmary was founded in October 1870 and opened in October 1879 on the grounds of George Watson’s Hospital, which had been acquired for the purpose. The place is the western side of the Meadow Walk, and the same devoted service to the cause of humanity has now been given for more than thirty years in those newer walls. But for the present we are concerned with incidents in the lives of old eighteenth-century doctors. Dr. Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), scholar and Jacobite, perhaps better known as that than as a physician, was a well-known figure. He was buried in Greyfriars’ Churchyard under a rectangular slab with four pillars, on which there was an inscription by the learned Ruddiman, himself a Jacobite scholar and much in sympathy with the deceased. Pitcairne, like the rest of Edinburgh, set great store on his wine; with an almost sublime confidence he collected certain precious bottles and decreed in his will that these should not be uncorked until the King should enjoy his own again, but when the nineteenth century dawned it seemed hardly worth while to wait any longer. Pious souls were found to restore the tomb which, like so many other tombs in Greyfriars, alas! had fallen into decay and disorder. They were rewarded in a way which was surely after the master’s own heart. The 25th of December 1800 was the anniversary of the doctor’s birth. The consent of Lady Anne Erskine, his granddaughter, having been obtained, the bottles were solemnly uncorked, and they were found to contain Malmsey in excellent preservation. Each contributor to the restoration received a large glass quaintly called a jeroboam. This, you do not doubt, they quaffed with solemn satisfaction in memory of the deceased.
Pitcairne was far from “sound,” according to the standard of the time; he was deist or perhaps even atheist, it was opined, and one was as bad as the other, but he must have his joke at whatever price. At a sale of books a copy of Holy Writ could find no purchaser. “Was it not written,” sniggered Pitcairne, “Verbum Deimanetin æternum?” The crowd had Latin enough to see the point. There was a mighty pother, strong remarks were freely interchanged, an action for defamation was the result, but it was compromised. I tell elsewhere of a trick played by Pitcairne on the tryers. Dr. Black, of the police establishment, played one even more mischievous on Archibald Campbell, the city officer. Black had a shop in the High Street, the taxes on which were much in arrear, and the irascible Highlander threatened to seize his “cattinary (ipecacuanha) pottles.” Black connected the handle of his door with an electric battery and awaited developments. First came a clerk, who got nothing more than a good fright. He appeared before his master, who asked him what he meant by being “trunk like a peast” at that time of day? He set off for the doctor’s himself, but when he seized the door handle he received a shock that sent him reeling into the gutter. “Ah,” said one of the bystanders, who no doubt was in the secret, “you sometimes accuse me of liking a glass, but I think the doctor has given you a tumbler!” “No, sir,” cried Archie as soon as he had recovered his speech. “He shot me through the shoulder with a horse-pistol. I heard the report by —— Laddie, do you see any plood?” An attempt was made to communicate with the doctor next day through the clerk, but the latter promptly refused. “You and the doctor may paith go to the tevil; do you want me to be murdered, sir?”
Practical joking of the most pronounced description was much in favour in old Edinburgh. One Dempster, a jeweller in the Parliament Close, after a bout of hard drinking, was minded to cut his throat. A friend, described by Kay as “a gentleman of very convivial habits,” remarked in jest that he would save him the trouble, and proceeded to stick a knife into him. It was at once seen that the joke—and the knife—if anything, had been pushed too far, and John Bennet, surgeon, was summoned in desperate haste; his treatment was so satisfactory that the wound was cured and the matter hushed up. The delighted Hamilton, relieved from dismal visions of the Tolbooth and worse, “presented Mr. Bennet with an elegant chariot,” and from this time he was a made man. His ideas of humour were also a little peculiar. In payment of a bet he gave a dinner at Leith at which, as usual, everybody drank a great deal too much. They were to finish up the evening at the theatre, and there they were driven in mourning coaches at a funereal pace. All this you may consider mere tomfoolery, mad pranks of ridiculous schoolboys, but Bennet was a grave and reputable citizen; he was President of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803, and died in 1805, and in the stories that I tell of him and others you have for good or ill eighteenth-century Edinburgh. He was a very thin man. He once asked a tailor if he could measure him for a suit of small clothes? “Oh,” said the man of shears, “hold up your stick, it will serve the purpose well enough.” You can only conjecture whether the order was in fact given, for there the chronicle stops short. There are certain “large and comfortable words” in the Rhyming Epistle to a Tailor that would have served excellent well for a reply. Bennet had not the wit of Burns, and his reply is not preserved. You believe, however, it did not lack strength.
DR. ALEXANDER WOOD
From an Engraving after Ailison
One of the best known surgeons of old Edinburgh was Alexander Wood (1725-1807), whose name still survives in a verse of Byron’s. Once he “would a-wooing go,” and was asked by his proposed father-in-law as to his means. He drew out his lancet case: “We have nothing but this,” he said frankly. He got the lady, however. Sir James Stirling, the Provost, was unpopular on account of his opposition to a scheme for the reform of the Royal boroughs of Scotland. He was so like Wood that the one was not seldom mistaken for the other, and a tragedy of errors was well-nigh acted. An angry mob, under the mistaken impression that they had their Lord Provost, were dragging Wood to the edge of the North Bridge with the loudly expressed intention of throwing him over, but when he yelled above the din, “I’m lang Sandy Wood; tak’ me to a lamp and ye’ll see,” the crowd dissolved in shouts of laughter.
When the great Mrs. Siddons was at the theatre it was a point of fashion with ladies to faint by the score. Wood’s services were much in requisition, a good deal to his disgust. “This is glorious acting,” said some one to him. “Yes, and a d—d deal o’t too,” growled Sandy, as he sweated from one unconscious fair to the other. Almost as well known as Sandy were his favourite sheep Willie and a raven, which followed him about whenever they could.
The most conspicuous figure of the eighteenth-century Edinburgh doctors was William Cullen (1710-1790), who in 1756 was made Professor of Chemistry in the University. One charming thing about those Edinburgh doctors is their breadth of culture: Cullen had the pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the original. When Dugald Stewart was a lad he fell ill, and was attended by Cullen, who recommended the great Spaniard to the ingenious youth. Doctor and patient had many a long talk over favourite passages. Dr. John Brown, afterwards author of the Brunonian system of medicine, was assistant to Cullen, but they quarrelled, and Brown applied for a mastership in the High School. Cullen could scarcely trust his ears. “Can this be oor Jock?” quoth he.