ADVENTURES OF AN ARMY PHYSICIAN.


Robert Jackson, the son of a small landed proprietor of limited
income but respectable character in Lanarkshire, was born in 1750,
at Stonebyres, in that county. He received his education first at
the barony school of Wandon, and afterwards under the care of Mr
Wilson, a teacher of considerable local celebrity at Crawford, one
of the wildest spots in the Southern Highlands. He was subsequently
apprenticed to Mr William Baillie, of Biggar; and in 1766 proceeded,
for the completion of his professional training, to the university
of Edinburgh, at that time illustrated and adorned by the genius and
learning of such men as the Monros, the Cullens, and the Blacks.

In pursuing his studies at this favoured abode of science and
literature, young Jackson is said to have evinced all that purity of
morals and singleness of heart which characterised him in
after-life, and to have resisted the allurements of dissipation by
which, in those days especially, the youthful student was tempted to
wander from the paths of virtuous industry. His circumstances were,
however, distressingly narrow; and not only was he forced to forego
the means of professional improvement open only to the more opulent
student; but in order to meet the expenses of the winter-sessions,
he was obliged to employ the summer, not in the study but in the
practice of his profession. He engaged himself as medical officer to
a Greenland whaler, and in two successive summers visited, in that
capacity, 'the thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;' returning on
each occasion with a recruited purse and a frame strengthened and
invigorated by exposure and exercise. During these expeditions he
occupied his leisure with the study of the Greek and Roman