The notices to which I here specially refer exist in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. The Register House, Edinburgh, contains a curious and valuable series of these Accounts, detailing the daily expenses of the kings of Scotland from the reign of James III. down to the ascension of the English throne by James VI. At the time of the first appearance of syphilis in our northern realm, the throne of Scotland was occupied by James IV., a prince who was a great patron of the arts and sciences of his time. He was a practitioner in them also, as well as a patron of them. At different times we find him busily experimenting in chemistry, in physiology, and in medicine. His daily expense-books contain many entries of purchases for instruments and materials to make the unmakeable “quinta essentia,” or philosopher’s stone; and he had laboratories for these investigations both at Edinburgh and Stirling. His alchemical assistant—John the Leeche—whom he had imported from the Continent and made Abbot of Tungland, experimented for the king in physiology as well as in chemistry. John, Dædalus-like, undertook to prove the improvability of human progression by flying to France with wings. “To that effect he causet (states Bishop Lesley[602]) mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis, quhilkis beand fessinit apoun him, he flew off the castell wall of Striveling, but shortly he fell to the ground and brak his thee bane.” But the doctrine of sympathies was in vogue in these days, and by that doctrine the afflicted Abbot easily, of course, and clearly explained all. For the cause of his fall, or “the wyt thairof he asscryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wingis, quhilk yarnit and covet the mydding and not the skyis.” Like the Egyptian king mentioned by Herodotus, King James made also a physiological or rather philological experiment to ascertain the primeval language of mankind; and for this purpose his Majesty sent a deaf and dumb woman to live with and bring up two young children upon the island of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth—the same island to which we have found the first victims of syphilis previously banished, and itself the old “Urbs Guidi” of the venerable Bede. When the two children, the companions of the “dumb voman cam to the aige of perfyte speach, some sayes” (to quote the account of Lindsay of Pitscottie) “they spak guid Hebrew;”[603] but the cautious old Scottish chronicler sagely doubts the truth of this tradition. King James personally practised the art of leechcraft, as well as experimented in alchemy and physiology. “He was,” says Pitscottie, “weill learned in the airt of medicine, and was ane singular guid chirurgiane; and thair was none of that professioune, if they had any dangerous cure in hand, bot would have craved his adwyse” (p. 249). So states the ancient Scottish historian. The High Treasurer’s Account shows that the king had in one important respect a right royal way of gaining patients,—a way by the adoption of which he probably might have secured a considerable consultation and private practice even in these modern days of high-pressure rivalry, and keen competition. For he paid his patients, instead of being paid by them. Thus, for example, in his daily expense-book, under the date of April 14th and 15th, 1491, are the two following entries:—
“Item to Domenico to gif the king leve to lat him blud, xviii shillings.” “Item til a man yat come to Lythgow to lat the king blud and did it nocht, xviii shillings.”
Some time afterwards he buys from a travelling pedlar “thre compases, ane hammer, and a turcase to tak out teeth;” and forthwith, we find the Scottish king becoming—like the more modern Peter the Great of Russia—not a dentist to royalty, but himself a royal dentist, as the two following entries may suffice to show (the first of them—provided there be any truth whatever in dental orthography—surely indicating a tooth of rather a tough and tusky character):—
“Item, to ane fallow, because the king pullit furtht his twtht, xviii shillings.”
“Item, to Kynnard, ye barbour, for tua teith drawin furtht of his hed be the king, xviii shillings.”
He seems to have tried his royal hand also at ocular surgery. But the terms of the following entry would seem rather ominously to hint that he was not a very successful operator for cataract:—
“Item, giffin to ye blind wif yat hed her eyne schorne, xiii shillings.”
A prince imbued with such medical and surgical propensities would naturally feel deeply interested in the first appearance within his realm of such a malady as syphilis; and in his Treasurer’s accounts there are several entries indicating that the king had bestowed monies upon various persons affected with this disease. Perhaps these monies were given less in the way of alms than in the way of a reward for the king’s medication of the patients; less for the behoof of royal charity than of royal chirurgery. The entries I advert to all occur during the currency of the years 1497 and 1498.[604] They are as follows:—the first sum given away being to a person at Dalry, when the king was on one of his many pilgrimages to the ancient and holy shrine of St. Ninian at Whitehorn, in Wigtownshire.
| September 1497. | |
| “Item, to ane woman with the grantgore thair [Dalrye, in Ayrshire],be the kingis command | iijs. vjd.” |
| 2 October 1497. | |
| “Item to thaim that hed the grantgor at Linlithquho | viijd.” |
| 21 February 1497-8. | |
| “Item, that samyn day at the tounne end of Strivelin to theseke folk in the grantgore | ijs.” |
| 22 February 1497-8. | |
| “Item, the xxij day of Februar giffin to the seke folk in thegrangore at the tounn end of Glasgo. | ijs.” |
| April 1498. | |
| “... seke folk in grangor in Lithgw as the Kingcom in the tounne | ijs. viijd.” |
In the course of the preceding remarks I have had occasion to adduce seven or eight different notices with regard to the appearance of syphilis in various cities and districts of Scotland during the years 1497-8, as at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Linlithgow, etc. A diversity of allusions to the same disease, of a less direct and official character, and somewhat later in date, may be traced in various olden Scottish works and writings. The malady is occasionally alluded to, for example, in the reports left us of some of the old criminal and other trials of Scotland. Thus a minute in the Records of the Privy Seal of Scotland records the punishment of a medical man in whose hands a dignitary of the church had died while under treatment for syphilis. The entry is as follows:—