Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/198

462 sive mockery of representation." Towards the close of the same year, he was presented with the freedom of his native town, and elected a member of its town-council. This year, also, he ventured upon a new field of authorship, by publishing his "Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine, being a View of the Progress of the Healing Art among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabians." This work was intended to have been comprised in three parts; but the second and third, in which the history of the medical sciences was to be brought down from the dark ages to the middle of the last century, were never written. The first part of the work, which appeared under the title of the "Ancient History of Medicine," was favourably received, both by the faculty and the critical press. In the following year, another and still more urgent demand was made upon his pen, on a subject connected also with his own profession. Europe will not soon forget that terrible visitation of cholera, which, after quivering like the bolt of heaven in its erratic progress, blasting and destroying wherever it happened to strike, fell at last upon Britain, and shook it to its deepest sea-girt foundations. Never was medical aid more needed, or the medical practitioner more imperilled; and never, perhaps, were the true chivalry and martyr-like devotedness of the healing art more severely tried and tested. On this occasion, while many physicians abandoned their duty in despair, or fled from it in terror, Moir was to be found daily and hourly at the bedsides of the infected, endeavouring to alleviate the sufferings of the sick by the resources of his skill, or to comfort the dying with the consolations of religion. Even this was not enough; and, therefore, after doing and daring the uttermost within his own round of occupation, he set himself to write his experience of the nature and treatment of the disease, and published a pamphlet, called "Practical Observations on Malignant Cholera." At this time, any suggestion by which the terrible pestilence could be retarded, was clutched as with a death-grasp; and no wonder, therefore, if a work on the subject by such a writer, went through two editions in a few days. Soon after he produced his equally interesting "Proofs of the Contagion of Malignant Cholera."

When the disease had abated and the danger passed away, it was full time that Dr. Moir, never at any time a wanderer from home, should enjoy the recreation of travel. He decided upon a trip to London, not so much, however, for the purpose of a pleasure tour, as to visit his talented and beloved friend, Galt, now shattered with paralysis, and hastening to decay, but with a mind shining as fiercely as ever through the crevices of the material ruin, and bearing up as bravely against the coming downfall. Moir also attended the meeting of the British Association, and made a visit to Cheltenham. Among the few intellectual giants with whom he came in contact during his short residence in London, was Coleridge, then living at Highgate; but, like many others who have enjoyed the privilege of an interview with this marvellous poet, philosopher, and theosophist, Moir came away delighted, he could not tell wherefore, and musing upon he knew not what. He had been in a land of dreams, and breathing an atmosphere of poppies, but the fresh air of reality brought him round in a few minutes. Indeed, the Archimagus of Highgate always found our Scotsmen the most stiff-necked of all his worshippers. Soon after his return from England, and in the beginning of 1833, Dr. Moir, from the retirement of his senior partner, became head of the business, a change which, while it increased his occupation, also lessened his opportunities for literary study and authorship. "Our