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

264 DEATH OF DR AND MRS JOHNSTONE
than for a work of the first merit by an obscure person to make its way.
This observation is proved every day ; it supports the vanity of disappointed
obscurity and ;
should not be forgotten by some who flutter on the wings of
celebrity."
Dr Crane, who succeeded him in Kidderminster, spoke with the greatest
admiration of Johnstone's skill in checking outbreaks of fever which from time
to time appeared. After young James's death, when the elder had removed to
Worcester, the Magistrates requested him (1785) to visit the Workhouse at
Kidderminster, where something like jail fever had broken out, and he at once
stopped its progress and cured the sick. He had a weak chest in his youth, and
his old age was distressed with asthma ; and although he continued to protest
against bleeding, with a few exceptions, as being useless and generally mis-
chievous, he tried it on himself very frequently to be fit for his work. His wife
died March 3, 1802, and his diary, March 9, records :
"This day my dear companion, the tender nurse of eleven children, is
conveyed to the tomb at Kidderminster to sleep with her father and five of her
children. Thomas lies at Aston Botterells."
At the beginning of April he went to sit on a Commission of Lunacy in
Birmingham, his opinion being considered of special value in such cases, and
from thence, within three days, he travelled about the country in his carriage
on professional duties nearly 200 miles. Only five days before his death he
went to Bromsgrove, thirteen miles distant, and three days later was requested
by a husband to come and see his wife. " Sir," he said, " I am a dying man,
but the end of usefulness is the end of life, and if my daughter can come with
me I will go."
"That my father did not actually die in his carriage was all that could be
said," wrote John Johnstone. He drove home and was lifted out on to the
couch, on which he expired the next day, April 29, 1802. His biographer
speaks of his vivacity and cheerful conversation with his family up to the last
day of his life, and that, " seeing his end approaching, he prepared for it
with the same firmness as if he were about to take a long journey. His
intellect was clear, his mind calm, and he expired at Worcester after a short,
and in no wise painful, struggle in the 73rd year of his age."
Berrow's Worcester Journal, April 29, 1802, says: "This morning died at his
house in Foregate Street, James Johnstone of Galabank, M.D., well known in
this city and county for his humanity and eminent skill during an extensive
practice of more than half a century, for the firmness and uprightness of his
moral demeanour, the variety, extent, and depth of his knowledge, the warmth
of his affections and the steadiness of his attachments. But his fame is not
confined within the sphere of his personal activity, his genius is consecrated to
posterity by an immortal physiological discovery, and the improvements he has
introduced into the science and art of healing will ever rank his name among
the benefactors of mankind."
There were also sympathetic notices and biographies in Aris's Gazette,
the Monthly Magazine, and the Gentleman's Magazine. The two last