Last Sunday we were in Edinburgh to meet a cousin of my mother’s but having arrived early had some time to wander.
Twenty five years earlier, one of my first exercises in drawing for Landscape Architecture took place under a Weeping Elm in Greyfriars Churchyard. So I went to look for this Elm among the “sleeping” dead. In my re-visit I was stopped by a tombstone with closing lines that I could only just read:
“just doing, speaking, writing . . .”
I was able to establish that this tombstone was to Dr Thomas Spens who died in 1843:
Dr Thomas Spens lived in Edinburgh’s New Town:
In 1809, Dr Thomas Spens, along with Dr Andrew Duncan and a number others, helped establish Edinburgh’s first ‘Lunatic Asylum’:
In October 1825, a critical letter in response to a report by Dr Thomas Spens featured in the Scotsman:
Whilst Wikipedia states otherwise it has been recorded that Dr Thomas Spens was the “first describer” of Stokes-Adams Syndrome:
Here is the “storie”:
Some years ago I made a film about the “New Lathallan”. Today it is a roofless, windowless ruin that looks out towards Grangemouth and its refineries. This “New Lathallan” – which each day I pass by on my way to work as a doctor – has been for sale for years and years: