Calm today + very pleasant. Had Coryza last night + took a couple [?] + Heroin1 which made me feel all right this morning but as the day went on I had a feeling of rigor + was + malaise. Drove round town in forenoon + to Hospital + Cannon Street. In afternoon visited a few workshops in connection with the new Workshops Act2, with Pritty3 to talk measurement of cubic space. Went to bed at 5. Frank Scott’s son John died at the Hospital this evening of Scarlet Fever.4 It is the most malignant case I have had since the Hospital was opened.
1 It is not clear what this combination was but in due course Dr Muir recorded the occasional user of Heroin and Cocaine pastilles.
2 Assume The Factory and Workshop Act 1895.
3 John Pritty (about 1857-1920), Burgh Surveyor for Selkirk.
4 John Grierson Scott (1885-1904), died 23 March 1904, aged 18, of Scarlatina Maligna, at the Joint Fever Hospital, usual residence 25 High Street, Selkirk. An apprentice house painter, he was the son of Francis Napier ‘’Frank’ Scott, house painter, of High Street, Selkirk, and Catherine Scott née Grierson.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/7, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1904]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 