History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

CHAPTER XVIII.
Young Galabank Visits France—Settles in Worcestershire— Lord Lyttleton—
Galabank's Writings—Correspondence with His Family—Many Deaths—
The Minister of Moffat—Letters to and from the Westerhalls—Lord
John Johnstone—Death of the Last Marquis— His Affairs—Galabank's
Family.
JAMES
JOHNSTONE, the eighth in descent from William, first Baron of
Nevvbie, was born at Annan, April 14 (O.S.), 1730, and named after his
father's only brother, who died in London the previous year. He was the
fourth son and ninth child of Galabank and his wife, who survived all their
sixteen children, except this son, his elder brother John, and Isobelle, the widow
of Adam Murray of Belriding.
James's first recollection of his mother was being tenderly nursed through
an attack of small-pox, and the prayers she offered up by his bedside for his
recovery. He matriculated at Edinburgh in 1747, and spent his vacations in
study at Annan, Moffat, and in Dr Blencowe's house at Whitehaven, where he
learned the composition of medicines and their effect. During the Session
at Edinburgh, he studied anatomy under the second Munro (who was also
instructor to the first anatomist of his time, John Hunter), besides attending
some of the best medical lectures of the day. Edinburgh was famous, as she is
now, for her medical science, but there were only sixty students in all in 1750.
Her schools were the resort of Dutch, Polish, Swedish, and Danish pupils
yet it was still such a disadvantage in England to be a Scot, that Dr St. Clair
from Edinburgh, settling in Dover, was not consulted by a single patient during
six months, and then left England altogether to take up a Professorship at
Leyden, which he had been offered a year before.
Johnstone graduated simultaneously as M.A. and M.D. in 1750, 1 and before
he was twenty-one was admitted a member of the Royal Medical Society of
Edinburgh. Only his brother William, who was still younger, and himself
were ever appointed at so early an age. A month later his brother, Edward,
gave him a letter of introduction to an old college friend, Mr Coburn, a
merchant in Dublin, as the ship, in which a place had been secured, touched
1 Oliver Goldsmith took his degree the next year. Dr Darwin, Dr Withering, and
other eminent Englishmen had Edinburgh degrees.