Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/190

Sibbald severely wounded. During the pillage of the town the family were robbed of nearly everything they possessed, and had to return to Fife on foot. He was next sent to the high school of Edinburgh, and thence to the university, where he remained five years. Partly through the influence of Leighton, who was then principal, he became possessed of ‘strong inclinations to a serious and good life,’ ‘shunned the plays and divertissements’ the other students followed, and read much ‘in his study, for which’ his fellows gave him ‘the name of “Diogenes in dolo.”’ For a time he studied theology, and cherished some intention of entering the church; but because he ‘preferred a quiet life,’ where he ‘might not be engaged in factions of church or state,’ he finally fixed upon medicine, and that he might also ‘see the world and know men,’ he resolved to prosecute the study of it abroad. In 1660 he went to Leyden, where he remained a year and a half, and in 1661 took the degree of M.D., his dissertation on the occasion being published under the title ‘De Variis Tabis Speciebus.’ From Leyden he went to Paris, and, during a sojourn there of nine months, made the acquaintance of Guido and Patin. He then proceeded to Angers, and, after taking his doctor's degree there on 12 June 1662, went to London, where he remained three months. In October he returned to Edinburgh and began the practice of medicine, with the determination to pass quietly through the world, and content himself with ‘a moderate fortune.’

With a view to investigating what materia medica in the way of herbs Scotland was capable of producing, Sibbald, along with Dr. Andrew Balfour, resolved, about 1667, to institute a botanical garden in Edinburgh, and for this purpose they obtained a piece of ground belonging to Holyrood House—‘of some forty feet every way’—which they stocked with about eight or nine hundred plants. The scheme, having attracted the attention of the other physicians in the city, soon obtained more general support, and from the town council they secured the lease of the garden belonging to Trinity Hospital, with adjacent grounds. Sibbald was also chiefly instrumental in founding the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, for which a charter was obtained on 2 Nov. 1681. On 30 Sept. 1682 he was appointed physician to Charles II, and on 30 Dec. of the same year geographer of Scotland. This latter appointment he obtained through the Earl of Perth, at whose instance and by whose help he had for some time begun to make collections for a geographical and statistical account of Scotland, with a description of the natural history of the kingdom. ‘This,’ he says, ‘was the cause of great pains and very much expense to me in buying all the books and manuscripts I could gather for that use, and procuring information from all parts of the country, even the remote isles.’ He also employed an assistant, John Adair, to whom he ‘paid a guinea for each double of the maps he made,’ and who was further subsidised by the gentry and the public. The most elaborate work of Sibbald, referring to the natural history of Scotland, was his ‘Scotia Illustrata; sive Prodromus Historiæ Naturalis; in quo regionis natura, incolarum ingenia et mores, morbi iisque medendi methodus, et medicina indigena, accurate explicantur,’ Edinburgh, 1684. The work was severely attacked by Dr. Pitcairne in 1696; and many of his strictures are deserved, for much of its information was based on the communications of ignorant and credulous correspondents. Sibbald replied in 1710 in a pamphlet entitled ‘Vindiciæ Scotiæ Illustratæ, sive Prodromi Naturalis Historiæ Scotiæ, contra Prodromastiges, sub larva libelli de legibus historiæ naturalis, latentes.’ Although commanded by the king to publish the natural history of the country, Sibbald, according to his own account, received nothing for his pains but a payment of a hundred guineas from James VII as his physician, on 5 March 1685.

In December 1684 Sibbald was elected president of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and in March 1685 he was appointed by the town council of Edinburgh the first professor of medicine in the university. The same year occurred what he terms the ‘difficultest passage of my life,’ when, through intercourse with his patron, the Earl of Perth, and the perusal of the lives of certain saintly catholics, he resolved to become a convert to catholicism. In consequence of his change of faith his house in Carrubers Close was broken into by a fanatic mob, who swore they would ‘rathillet’ (i.e. assassinate) him, and probably would have done so had he not made his escape by a back yard. Unable to continue his practice in Edinburgh, he went for a time to London, where, on 29 March 1686, he was elected a member of the College of Physicians. But either because he found London uncongenial, or because, as he states, his personal contact with the jesuits there, and the knowledge of the evil influence they exercised over the mind of the king, caused a strong reaction, his religious views underwent a sudden change: ‘I repented of my rashness,’ he says, ‘and resolved to come home and return to the church I was born in.’

In 1697 Sibbald presented his natural