Letter 1339

Blair asks Sloane to look over his botanical paper before it is published. He hopes the latter, along with his surgical observations, are worthy of the Philosophical Transactions. Blair requests that Sloane help his cousin, who has problems with his speech, find employment in Jamaica. 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]).