Very mild but rather more drying than yesterday. S.W. Made 13 town calls including Guttridge1, Ettrickhaugh Road + Hospital. Cycled to Faldonside + Sunderland Hall Lodge. Phyllis2 Dees worse + complaining of some stiffness + pain in left side of neck. Advised consult with Bramwell3 + Scott Skirving4 + they came out at 7. S.Sk. did a lumbar puncture + the fluid was a little turbid. We all dined. S.Sk. announced that he was going to have his appendix out preparatory to his marriage on Nov. 17th. Helen5 had tea at Wellwood + supped at Elmpark + went to a concert in Church Hall. I paid [illegible] accounts + sent away Colporteur6 money.
1 Edward Gutridge , millworker and tenant occupier of a house at 11 Ettrickhaugh Road, Selkirk, 1920 Valuation Roll
2 Phyllis Mary ‘Fiff’ Dees (1899-1920), daughter of Robert Irwin Dees (1872-1923) and Edith Mary Boileau Dees née Henderson, the new (1920) tenants at Faldonside; she had been involved in a car accident near Berrybush while travelling between the Gordon Arms and Tushielaw
3 Edwin ‘Ed’ Bramwell (1873-1952), Professor, M.B., Ch.B., F.R.C.P.E., Scottish neurologist, specialist in brain injuries and shell-shock and President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1933 to 1935
4 Archibald Adam Scott Skirving (1869-1930), M.B., C.M., lecturer in clinical surgery married Georgina Sally Heugh (1881-1967) at Morningside, 1920
5 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963), Dr Muir’s third daughter and sometime housekeeper was at her sisters (Wellwood) and at Mrs Mackintosh’s (Elm Park)
6 Colportage, the work of a colporteur, “A hawker of books, newspapers, etc. esp. (in English use) one employed by a society to travel about and sell or distribute Bibles and religious writings.” Source O.E.D.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/23, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1920]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 