The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE CHURCH AFTER THE REFORMATION 167
being allowed on the same day to ' steal pease and potatoes,
gather nutts and catch wild fowl in their nests.' These are
their concerns at a season when the blood was yet scarce
dry on the field of CuUoden.
At rare times we have notice of some physician or surgeon
on the island ; otherwise its healthfulness is a common matter
of remark, as witnessed by the age to which many of the
natives lived. Of course the old folks had their simple
vegetable remedies, and the medicine chest usually hung
from the rafters in the shape of a bunch of dried herbs. In
July 1713 John Davies is " chirurgeon " in Arran, and, when
summoned to appear before an Edinburgh Kirk Session,
professes his inability to attend 'because of the distance and
the many patients he had under his care, there being no other
chyrurgeon or physician in the island but himself.' In view
of what then constituted medical practice, the patients might
perhaps have run small risk by his temporary absence.^
' ' The practice of bleeding twice every year seems to have been intended as a
preventative again(st) the pleurisy : but it is now performed with the utmost regularity
at spring and fall. The Duke of Hamilton keeps a surgeon in pay, who at those
seasons makes a tour of the island. On notice of his approach, the inhabitants of each
farm assemble in the open air ; extend their arms ; and are bled into a hole made in the
ground, the common receptacle of the vital fluid.'—Pennant's Tour, p. 175. The final
story has been authoritatively repudiated as an absurdity.