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NOTES AND QUERIES. LII s i. MAR. 19,1910.

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN SUR- GEON (10 S. xi. 42). The following references to women practitioners in medicine may interest MB. STANLEY WILLIAMS and others :

" In 1712 Abigail Taylor, widow of Dr. Taylor, still continues her practice in physick (as she has done ever since his death) with as great success as when he was alive. If she do not perform cures nothing shall be required." The Norwich Post, 5 July, 1712.

In the manuscript Life of Sir Symonds D'Ewes in the British Museum it is stated that Mrs. D'Ewes set out from Coaxden Hall, near Axminster on her road to London, and arrived in the day at Dorchester about 27 miles. The shocks sustained, owing to the road, and perhaps to the build of the carriage, were so great that the infant son and heir (afterwards the re- nowned Sir Symonds D'Ewes) cried so vio- lently all the way that he ruptured himself, and was left behind under the care of Mrs. Margaret Waltham, a female practitioner of the town of Dorchester.

In Hayley's ' Life of Cowper l we find on p. 5 this statement by the poet himself :

" I had been all my life subject to inflammation of the eye, and, in my boyish days, had specks on both that threatened to cover them. My father, alarmed for the consequences, sent me to a female oculist of great renown at that time, in whose house I abode two years, but to no good purpose."

Y. T.

WATSON'S ' HISTORY OF PRINTING * (10 S. xii. 428, 511 ; 11 S. i. 90, 154). The case pre- sented by MR. COUPER tells very strongly in favour of the Watson authorship of the Preface to the ' History of Printing.* At a superficial glance the title-page appears conclusively to establish his claim. It must be remembered, however, that the title-page would be of no value as evidence, if it could be proved that Watson employed another person to write for him and paid him for doing the work. The literary " ghost " is a figure by no means uncommon in the annals of literature. And this is precisely what the opponents of the Watson author- ship contend for that he employed a skilful writer to put his notes into shape, paid him for his services, and then published the result as his own. A careful perusal of the Preface will, I think, bear out this opinion. On reading over its pages the following conclusions seem to be warranted :

1. That the writer was a highly educated man.

2. That he was a person skilled in literary composition.

3. That he evidently belonged to one of the learned professions ; most probably a lawyer, to judge from the form and logical consecutiveness of the narrative, and the nature of some of the expressions used.

4. That while intimately acquainted with Watson's personal history, he had, at the same time, a somewhat remarkable know- ledge of the private affairs of Mr. John Spottiswood. I refer particularly to p. 18 of the Preface.

Now, not one of these characteristics, not even the first of them, can fairly be claimed for Watson. We know nothing about his early education, except what is stated in the Preface, that he was bred to be a printer and was intended to succeed his father, but being too young at the date of his father's death in 1687, he did not begin the business of printing until 1695. There is little in such a statement on which to build an impos- ing theory about Watson's superior educa- tion. All that we can safely infer regarding him is that he received a fair, common- school education, which, combined with his acknowledged excellence as a printer, his energetic disposition, and his decided talent for business, stood him in remarkably good stead in the course of his chequered career.

John Spottiswood, on the other hand, possessed all the qualifications necessary for the writer of the Preface. He was a lawyer, and lectured on Roman and Scots law, being a kind of extra-mural teacher in con- nexion with Edinburgh University. See Chalmers's ' Life of Ruddiman, 4 and Grant's ' Story of the University of Edinburgh,' vol. i. He was also a literary man, wrote and edited many works, chiefly legal, but including biographies, poems, and lighter productions, and was Keeper of the Ad- vocates* Library for twenty-five years. Above all, he was Watson's legal adviser, and piloted him safely through several forensic whirlpools, evolved, to a large extent, by the termagant Mrs. Anderson. It is known that he not only transacted Watson's legal business, but did literary work for him as well, in the same way as Ruddiman and others are stated to have done.

MR. COUPER mentions George Paton as possibly the first to originate the story of Spottis wood's authorship. No better autho- rity than that of Paton could be named in support of the story. In the eighteenth century he enjoyed much the same reputation for book-knowledge in Scotland and beyond it that Dr. David Laing did in the nineteenth century. A native of Edinburgh, he was