Foggy + damp but not so wet as yesterday. I had a very bad attack of Dyspepsia + would fain1 have kept in the house but Dav.2 wanted me to go to Hawick with Wilfred Lees3 to get his leg X rayed + after seeing some cases motoring I went to Hawick in the motor ambulance. It was very interesting to see the process + the apparatus of X ray work4. Boyack5 left this morning + Baptie6 took her down to the station.
1 FAIN, adj.1, Sc. usages of Eng. fain. [fe:n Sc.], adj. 1. Glad, pleased; happy, content [Source: ‘Dictionars o the Scots Leid’]
2 David Charteris ‘Dav.’ Graham (1889-1963), M.B., medical practitioner and Dr Muir’s business partner
3 Dugald Cowan Shankland (1870-1941), ship owner, and sometime of Whinfield, Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire had hit and injured a young man Wilfred Lees whilst driving at Fairnilea on 11 August 1921; Lees’ identity was finally revealed at the trial of Dugald Cowan Shankland for a motoring offence which was reported in the Southern Reporter of 15 December 1921, he was Wilfred Lees junior (1900-1942), a plumber, born Preston, Lancashire the son of Wilfred Lees and Alice Lees née Wilding who had married March Quarter 1890, and was on a motorbike holiday when a collision took place at Fairnilee with Shankland’s car, Lees died April Quarter 1942 but whether his injuries contributed to his relatively early death is not known [birth, Dec 1900, Preston 8e 521; parents’ marriage, Mar 1890, Preston 8e 716]
4 It is a measure of the pace of adoption of X rays (a technology that gained wide use during the First World War*) in local medical practice that this was Dr Muir’s first experience of the equipment and process of X rays [* Medical Applications of X Rays by Otha W Linton]
5 Miss Boyack was a friend of Dora Muir’s who stayed with the Muirs from 3rd to 31st August 1920; perhaps they knew one another from wartime nursing (she went on a number of Dr Muir’s calls and assisted on at least one occasion) but she is otherwise unidentified
6 Thomas Baptie (1860-1929), driver and handyman for Dr Muir
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/24, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1921]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 