Letter 1832

Blair is glad to hear Petiver’s mission in Holland was a success and he made acquisitions at auction. He laments that Sloane did not inform him of Petiver’s going to Holland beforehand because he had wanted to send a copy of his ‘Manuale Pharma:Botanicum, and Synopsis Methodi: Turniforiana to be revised by the Botanists there’. He desires clarification as to how many prints he is to make of his ‘Osteographia Eleph:’. Patrick Blair was a botanist and surgeon whose papers were published in the Transactions. In 1715 Blair joined the Jacobite rebellion as a battle surgeon but was captured and condemned to death. He was visited by Sloane in prison in the hopes the latter might secure a pardon. Sloane was successful and the pardon arrived shortly before Blair’s scheduled execution (Anita Guerrini, Blair, Patrick (c.16801728), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2568, accessed 31 May 2011]).