GRAHAM OF DOUGALSTON'S HOUSE.

The mansion of this wealthy family, which, about the commencement of last century, was among the most influential in Glasgow, was situated a few houses from the head of Stockwell-Street, on the west side. It is now occupied as a tavern, designated the "Tam o' Shanter."

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF KING WILLIAM.

This fine equestrian statue was presented to the city in the year 1734, by James M'Crae, Esq., who, after having filled the dignified office of governor of Madras, retired and resided in Glasgow.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE LEPROSY AND PLAGUE IN GLASGOW.

"And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering on his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean."-LEV. xiii. 45.

"I will stretch out my hand that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth."-ExOD. ix. 15.

THE founder of the Leper Hospital in Glasgow, alluded to in a former part of the present work, was Marjory Stewart, the legitimate daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany, son of King Robert the Second. She married early in life Duncan Campbell, Lord Lochow, and became the mother of Archibald, whose son, Colin, was afterwards known to the world as the first Earl of Argyle.

What led this lady first to settle in Glasgow, can now be only explained by the fact of the city being at that time, next to St. Andrews, the principal seat of ecclesiastical learning in Scotland, and therefore a place well

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suited to her religious disposition. After her settlement in the town, she acquired that whole space of ground on which the Bridgegate is now built, in these days known by the name of Fishergate; and not long after, she made an addition to her property, by her acquisition of that portion of land on the south bank of Clyde, stretching from the Old Bridge, on the west, to the, at that time pleasant rivulet, called the Blind Burn, on the east. This space of ground she denominated St. Ninian's Croft.

At the time of which we speak, the disease of leprosy was by no means uncommon on the continent of Europe; and although, at the present day, it is almost completely unknown as a native endemic in any part of our quarter of the globe; yet from the 10th to the 16th century it prevailed in nearly every district of it. Laws were enacted by princes and courts to arrest its diffusion; the pope issued bulls with regard to the ecclesiastical separation and rights of the infected; a particular order of knighthood was instituted to watch over the sick, and leper hospitals, or lazar houses, were every where founded to receive the victims of the disease. Indeed, when we examine the old records of any of the towns of Great Britain, in almost every case we will find some enactment with regard to leprosy.

Regarding, however, the first appearance of the disease in Great Britain and Western Europe generally, there has been much conflict of opinion. Some authors have averred, that it was introduced from the east by those

who returned from the Crusades, and that by this means it first reached Great Britain. It is quite possible that through the increased international intercourse of that period, it may have been propagated more rapidly and widely than would otherwise have occurred; but there are ample reasons and proofs for believing that it existed on the continent of Europe, and even as far westward as England, before the Crusade fanaticism had drawn any converts from this country. The first relay of Englishmen engaged in the Crusades, left in 1096, and returned two years afterwards.

Few subjects in pathology are more curious, and at the same time more obscure, than the changes which, in the course of ages, have taken place in the diseases incident, either to the human race at large, or to particular divisions and communities of it. A great proportion of the maladies to which mankind are liable have, it is true, remained entirely unaltered in their character and consequences, from the earliest periods of medical history down to the present day;-as, for example,. gout and epilepsy, which show the same symptoms and course now as the writings of Hippocrates describe them to have done upwards of 2000 years ago. But still we have strong grounds for believing, that in regard to our own individual species alone, the diseases to which mankind are subject have already undergone, in some respects, marked changes within the historic era of medicine. Since the first medical observations that are now extant on disease were made, and recorded

in Greece, various new species of human maladies have, there can be little doubt, made their original appearance, as, for example, small pox, measles, and hooping-cough. Again, some diseases which prevailed formerly, seem to have now entirely disappeared from among the human race, such as the lycanthropia of the sacred writings, and of various old medical authors. Other maladies, as that most anomalous affection, the English sweating sickness of the fifteenth century, have only once, and that for a very short period, been permitted to commit their ravages upon mankind. And lastly, we have still another and more extensive class, including maladies that have changed their geographical stations to such an extent, as to have made inroads upon whole districts and regions of the world, where they were formerly unknown, leaving now untouched the localities which, in older times, suffered most severely from their visitations. To this class belongs the European leprosy, or tubercular elephantiasis of the middle ages.* The nature of this disease, which has been well depicted in Holy writ, was, perhaps, such as we can but very inadequately conceive. Comparatively simple in its origin, in its early

*The present writer would here refer the curious reader to a series of papers entitled, "Antiquarian Notices of Leprosy and Leper Hospitals in Scotland and England," a lucubration published in 1842 in the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, by the present learned Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, in which will be found an admirable compendium of all the knowledge we possess of this " omnium malorum fœdissimus," as it formerly existed in this country.