Scottish medical missionaries in Central Africa.

'Feavers'. He writes a long and sensible letter, from which we gather that he was actually familiar with the patient's present situation, and that she had persistent abdominal pains, violent sweatings, and great weakness. Dr. Forbes goes on to speak slightingly about yet another doctor, Dr. Simpson, who, it seems, was also treating her, for he writes, 'Try first his pills conforming to his own directions. The pain in stomach would appear to be the effects of the Lemon Juice, for acids doe not agree with my Lady and seldom misse to create some pain.' When she is less weak, Dr. Forbes hopes to attempt some prophylaxis with Peruvian Bark, and adds the very modem. advice: 'Let my lady dayly try to gett up altho not for a long tyme.. . see that they that look to her be gentle and easy.' Some undated prescriptions of Dr. Forbes, made out to Pattersone, Chirurgen Apothecary of Inverness, exist, but these, it seems, refer to his attendance on the second countess, fifteen years later, and require further elucidation. At any rate, by September 1699, Lord Tarbat was taking the varied advice of at least five medical men, and word had got around the neighbours. Col. Menzies wrote from Inverness on 8 August inquiring for news by express 'how my lady is, which I long exceedingly for, not only upon her but your own account. I am confident (ifmy friendship dowth not blindfold my regard) this visitation will contribute verie much not only to her temporal but lykewise to her eternal happiness.' A minister with an unreadable signature was writing with even greater piety that he blessed the Lord for the test he had put her Ladyship to, adding how beloved she was by 'the poore'. Piety and prescriptions were unavailing. The next letter in chronological sequence is from the factor, John MacLeod, written on 9 October to Provost Duff of Inverness, and it is a thought unfeeling, even in a letter between men of affairs: 'I knowed yesternight from Lord Tarbet shewing yt. my lady's dead, wha depairted yesterday about twa o'clock in the morning and withall I am about to send to you for eight boils of malt.' Another business letter four days later concerns the expenditure of twenty pounds Scots for some of 'the necessities formy Lady Tarbet's burriall'. This is all that has been extracted about this case, but it is interesting to learn that the distraught husband, five months later and in his seventy-first year, was signing a letter to a beautiful widow: 'Yours or else little better than nothing-T.'. He remarried shortly afterwards. The final contribution to this meeting was a paper by Dr. K. John McCracken, another member of the Department of History at Stirling University, who spoke on: