Thomas Garvine--Ayrshire surgeon active in Russia and China.

THE NAME OF Thomas Garvine of Ayrshire was entered in the records of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow as a surgeon-freeman in 1738.1 He had been apprenticed to John Marshall (d. 1719), surgeon of Kilsyth, who was in charge of Glasgow University Physick Gardens in 1704. Probably Garvine served his apprenticeship in the early years of the eighteenth century, prior to his activities in the East. Before 1713 Garvine worked in a hospital at St. Petersburg. This is one of the few biographical facts about his stay in Russia provided by a letter from Hugh, third Earl of Loudoun dated 31 October and addressed to Sir John Erskine or his brother Charles of Alva in Scotland; in it the Earl of Loudoun asks to recommend Thomas Garvine "who is now a surgeon in the hospital at Petersbourg", to their relative Areskine (Erskine), physician to the Czar Peter the Great at St. Petersburg.2 Robert Erskine (d. 1718) was the sixth surviving son of Sir Charles Erskine of Alva, Bart., and brother of the recipient of Loudoun's letter. He had received his medical education at Edinburgh and was one of eleven physicians and over eighty surgeons called to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great.3 To become a protege of this influential doctor must have meant a great deal to the young Garvine, of whose surgical activities we know very little, nor can any written work by him be traced in the authors' indexes of learned societies of his day. In the introduction to John Bell's travel account he is mentioned as the "first Scottish doctor to be sent to Peking by the Russians".4 It is interesting to read of the need in China for Western physicians in a travel document by Too-Le-Shin,5 Chinese Ambassador to the Tartars, from 1712 to 1715. He met the Governor of Tobolsk in Siberia, General Koko-lin (Prince Gagarin in John Bell's account6) in 1713 and voiced the Emperor K'ang Hsi's request for "good surgeons or physicians" to be sent to Peking. At that time Too-Le-Shin received a negative reply ". . . with regard to medical men, we have none of great ability at this place. We have already sent to Moskow to enquire for persons of this description, but none has arrived yet from thence; they may, however, still arrive previous to the period of your excellency's return to China." The emperor had to wait until 1716, one year after Too-Le-Shin had completed his mission. *Renate Burgess, Ph.D., is Keeper of Art Collections at the Wellcome Institute for.the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BP.