Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/103

Rh that had ever left a British port, conveying 40,000 soldiers, was sent to achieve its conquest. It was soon won and occupied; but our troops found, on entering into possession, that a deadlier enemy than any that France could furnish was arrayed against them to dispute their footing; so that, independently of the fearful amount of mortality, ten thousand brave soldiers were soon upon the sick list. As for the disease, too, which produced such havoc, although it was sometimes called fever, and sometimes ague, neither its nature, causes, nor cure, could be satisfactorily ascertained. All this, however, was necessary to be detected, if our hold was to be continued upon Walcheren; and the chief medical officers of the army were ordered to repair in person to the island, and there hold an inquest upon the malady, with a view to its removal. But no medical Curtius could be found to venture into such a gulf: the surgeon-general of the army declared that the case was not surgical, and ought therefore to be superintended by the physician-general; while the latter as stoutly argued, that the duty indisputably belonged not to him, but to the inspector-general of army hospitals. In this way, an office reckoned tantamount to a death- warrant, from the danger of infection which it involved, was bandied to and fro, while the unfortunate patients were daily sickening and dying by the hundred. One man, however, fully competent for the task, and whose services on such an occasion were completely gratuitous, departed upon the perilous mission. This was Dr. Blane, who, as belonging to a different department, had no such obligations as his army brethren, but who, nevertheless, undertook the obnoxious duty in 1809, while the disease was most prevalent. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that the British soon after abandoned their possession of Walcheren.

Another public service on which Dr. Blane was employed in the following year (1810), was to visit Northfleet, and report on the expediency of establishing a dock-yard and naval arsenal there. This terminated his public official labours, which were so highly valued, that in 1812 he was raised to the rank of baronet, and appointed in the same year physician in ordinary to the Prince Regent. In 1819, he reappeared as an author, by the publication of "Elements of Medical Logic," the most useful of his writings, and one so highly prized, that, in the course of a few years, it went through several editions. In 1821, having now for two years been past the "three score and ten" that constitute the common boundary of human life, he suffered under the effects of old age in the form of prurigo senilis, for which he was obliged to take such copious doses of opium, that he became a confirmed opium eater; but this habit, so fatal in most instances, seems in him to have been counteracted by the disease which it alleviated, for he continued to the last in full possession and use of his intellectual faculties. In 1822, he published "Select Dissertations on Several Subjects of Medical Science," most of which had previously appeared in the form of separate papers in the most important of our medical periodicals. In 1826, he was elected a member of the Institute of France. Although a long period of peace had now occurred, his zeal for the welfare of the navy still continued. This he had first manifested on his being placed at the head of the Navy Medical Board, when he caused regular returns or journals of the state of health and disease to be kept by every surgeon in the service, and forwarded to the Navy Board, from which returns he drew up those dissertations that were read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and published in its "Transactions." But anxious still more effectually to promote emulation and reward