Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE ACADEMIC GREGORIES
The designs and ornaments of thisvolume are by Mr Joseph Brown,and the printing is from the press ofMessrs Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.
PREFACE
As far back as I can remember there hung in my father’sstudy two prints, the one a mezzotint of Professor JamesGregory, and the other, inferior as a picture, but mostbeautiful in its subject, an engraving of William PulteneyAlison.
In answer to nursery enquiries as to the stories belongingto these two pictures, there had always perforce to besome dark facts related in connection with Dr JamesGregory, but these were kept rather in the background,and the impression we got of him came nearer to theincidental portrait which Robert Louis Stevenson drawsof him in ‘Weir of Hermiston.’ With William PulteneyAlison we could, as it were, shake hands, for the storyteller could here insert a piece of real history, of how,long ago, this man had sat beside his crib watching overhim, holding him back from the arms of Death. Wewatched with him as he sat there ministering to this sickchild, keeping alive the little flicker of life, keeping thelittle restless body still. ‘If he moves, he will faint,’Professor Alison had said. ‘If he faints, he will die.’Across the gap of years other children held their breathtill the little patient fell asleep.
But the most interesting fact about Gregory and Alisonto us as children was that they had both been professorsof the Practice of Physic in Edinburgh University, and6the little boy who had so nearly died now lectured inthe place of the physician who had saved his life.
This early acquaintance gave me a love for theseprofessors, and when I came to be asked to write a bookupon the Academic members of the old Scottish familyof Gregory, two of them at least were familiar as friends.
In the preparation of my book I have received muchkindness, and I should especially like to thank Mr PhilipSpencer Gregory, of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law, lateFellow of King’s College, Cambridge, for the help whichhe as a representative of the family was able to give me,and also for his very interesting ‘Records of the Fa