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

EDWARD'S ILLNESS 227
Having gained your point on the first day, we are encouraged to hope that
you were not much later than the appointed time on Thursday at Annan.
" My mother desires to join me in assuring you that we are very impatient
to hear of your arrival at Annan and of the situation in which you find my
good grandmother. We most cordially sympathise with you both. We hope
you will not forget to offer our respectful duty to the worthy old lady, and
let her know how anxious we are to have more pleasing accounts of her.
There is a letter to you from Mr Pulteney. It contains no more than you
know already, and I will answer it. Also one from General Lockhart to tell
you that my cousin Mary Anne had a daughter born on the 15th, and that
both are doing well. He regrets not having seen Neddy, and hopes he is
quite well."
Edward's studies were interrupted by serious illness. He had assisted
his father during the vacation in his work among the poor in Kidderminster
and the neighbourhood, where there was an outbreak of typhus fever, 1 and he
caught it. In after life he attributed his recovery, under Providence, to his
father's skill and his mother's care and perfect obedience to his father's orders.
As his younger brothers and sister were in the house, three of them quite
little children, muriatic acid poured on common salt was placed in a jar on
the stairs, and everyone who passed up or down was directed to stir it up with
a stick. The efficacy of this new remedy was proved by no one in the house,
including the servants, taking the complaint. " My brother," wrote John
Johnstone in after life, " recovered almost miraculously from the last and worst
stage of this dreadful fever. The muriatic vapour was kept rising continually
in the room, and not one of the family, at that time consisting of sixteen
persons, was ; infected " but the boy, for he was not eighteen, was a long
time before he got up his strength, and his future sphere of action was
decided by his father thinking it desirable that he should live in a bracing
climate.
General Lockhart, a man of the world who had won his title and the
Order of Maria Theresa by his campaign in Poland, seems to have had a
sincere regard for his wife's young cousins. He wrote to congratulate Johnstone
when Edward was completely recovered, often asked him to Dryden
when he was at Edinburgh, and later, when he was appointed Governor of the
Austrian Netherlands, invited Edward to spend a month with them at the
Viceregal residence.
As Edward was his father's executor, and destroyed all his own letters
home while preserving those of his elder brother, only his careful note-books
and thesis for his medical degree exist as memorials of his College life, but the
letters of Dr Cullen and Dr Gregory to his father show that it was very credit-
able. The first wrote from Edinburgh, July 3, 1779 :
" Dear Sir,—An esteem and regard for your character very readily engaged
my attention to your sons, who came to be our pupils here, and I cannot now
1 Fever that the elder called putrid, the younger called typhus.