Adair, James Makittrick

, a physician, a native of Scotland, but many years settled at Bath, was afterwards physician to the commander in chief, and the colonial troops, of the island of Antigua, and subsequently of the Leeward islands, and also one of the judges of the court of King’s Bench and Common pleas in Antigua. His abilities as a physician have never been questioned, and his private character is said to have been in some respects amiable; but he possessed an irritability of temper, joined, as it generally is, with extraordinary self-conceit, which occasioned his being constantly engaged in disputes, and | often with men, such as Philip Thicknesse, equally rulous and turbulent. Towards the end of his life, his writings partook much of his temper, and although read with some degree of pity, were soon thrown aside. Some account of one of his last quarrels may be seen in the dedication, to the first volume of Thicknesse’ s Memoirs. He died at a very advanced age, April 24, 1802, at Harrowgate in Yorkshire. His first publications were on Regimen and the Materia Medica, in vol. VIII and IX of Duncan’s Medical Commentaries: 2. “Medical Cautions for the consideration of Invalids, those especially who resort to Bath,” 8vo, 1786, and a much enlarged edition, 1787. 3. “A philosophical and medical sketch of the Natural History of the Human Body and Mind,” 8vo, 1787. 4. “Unanswerable objections against the Abolition of the Slave-Trade,” 8vo, 1789. He was examined on this subject by the privy-council; but his objections have been long since fully answered. 5. “Essays on Fashionable Diseases,” 8vo, 1789. 6. “An essay on a Non-descript, or newlyinvented Disease,” 8vo, 1790. 7. “A candid inquiry into the truth of certain charges of the dangerous consequences of the Suttonian or Cooling regimen, under Inoculation for the Small Pox,” 8-vo, 1790. 8. “Anecdotes of the Life, Adventures, and Vindication of a Medical Character, metaphorically defunct, by Benjamin Goosequill and Peter Paragraph,” 8vo, 1790. This rambjing and incoherent production contains some particulars of his life, but more of his quarrels with his contemporaries. 9. “Two Sermons; the first addressed to British seamen, the second to the British West India slaves,” 8vo, 1791. Most of these were published for the benefit of the Bath, hospital, or the tin-miners of Cornwall. ¹