adoption of which he probably might have secured a considerable consultation and private practice even in these modern days of high-pressure rivalry, and keen competition. For he paid his patients, instead of being paid by them. Thus, for example, in his daily expense-book, under the date of April 14th and 15th, 1491, are the two following entries:— “Item to Domenico to gif the king leve to lat him blud, xviii shillings.” “Item til a man yat come to Lythgow to lat the king blud and did it nocht, xviii shillings.” Some time afterwards he buys from a travelling pedlar “thre compases, ane hammer, and a turcase to tak out teeth;” and forthwith, we find the Scottish king becoming—like the more modern Peter the Great of Russia—not a dentist to royalty, but himself a royal dentist, as the two following entries may suffice to show (the first of them—provided there be any truth whatever in dental orthography—surely indicating a tooth of rather a tough and tusky character):— “Item, to ane fallow, because the king pullit furtht his twtht, xviii shillings.” “Item, to Kynnard, ye barbour, for tua teith drawin furtht of his hed be the king, xviii shillings.” He seems to have tried his royal hand also at ocular surgery. But the terms of the following entry would seem rather ominously to hint that he was not a very successful operator for cataract:— “Item, giffin to ye blind wif yat hed her eyne schorne, xiii shillings.” A prince imbued with such medical and surgical propensities would naturally feel deeply interested in the first appearance within his realm of such a malady as syphilis; and in his Treasurer’s accounts there are several entries indicating that the king had bestowed monies upon various persons affected with this disease. Perhaps these monies were given less in the way of alms than in the way of a reward for the king’s medication of the patients; less for the behoof of royal charity than of royal chirurgery. The entries I advert to all occur during the currency of the years 1497 and 1498.[604] They are as follows:—the first sum given away being to a person at Dalry, when the king was on one of his many pilgrimages to the ancient and holy shrine of St. Ninian at Whitehorn, in Wigtownshire. September 1497. “Item, to ane woman with the grantgore thair [Dalrye, in Ayrshire], be the kingis command iijs. vjd.” 2 October 1497. “Item to thaim that hed the grantgor at Linlithquho viijd.” 21 February 1497-8. “Item, that samyn day at the tounne end of Strivelin to the seke folk in the grantgore ijs.” 22 February 1497-8. “Item, the xxij day of Februar giffin to the seke folk in the grangore at the tounn end of Glasgo. ijs.” April 1498. “... seke folk in grangor in Lithgw as the King com in the tounne ijs. viijd.”