Letter 1436

Blair writes that his treatise is nearly complete. He asks how many copies Sloane and the Royal Society would like. Blair hopes that some of the figures might be of enough interest to publish in the Philosophical Transactions. Lyon has encountered difficulties on his passage to Jamaica and asks that Sloane intercede on his behalf. 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]).