As far back as I can remember there hung in my father’s study two prints, the one a mezzotint of Professor James Gregory, and the other, inferior as a picture, but most beautiful in its subject, an engraving of William Pulteney Alison.

In answer to nursery enquiries as to the stories belonging to these two pictures, there had always perforce to be some dark facts related in connection with Dr James Gregory, but these were kept rather in the background, and the impression we got of him came nearer to the incidental portrait which Robert Louis Stevenson draws of him in ‘Weir of Hermiston.’ With William Pulteney Alison we could, as it were, shake hands, for the story teller could here insert a piece of real history, of how, long ago, this man had sat beside his crib watching over him, holding him back from the arms of Death. We watched with him as he sat there ministering to this sick child, keeping alive the little flicker of life, keeping the little restless body still. ‘If he moves, he will faint,’ Professor Alison had said. ‘If he faints, he will die.’ Across the gap of years other children held their breath till the little patient fell asleep.

But the most interesting fact about Gregory and Alison to us as children was that they had both been professors of the Practice of Physic in Edinburgh University, and the little boy who had so nearly died now lectured in the place of the physician who had saved his life.

This early acquaintance gave me a love for these professors, and when I came to be asked to write a book upon the Academic members of the old Scottish family of Gregory, two of them at least were familiar as friends.

In the preparation of my book I have received much kindness, and I should especially like to thank Mr Philip Spencer Gregory, of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, for the help which he as a representative of the family was able to give me, and also for his very interesting ‘Records of the Family of Gregory.’ My thanks are also due to Professor Campbell Fraser for personal introduction to sources of information, to Mr Turner, Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford, and to Mr Henry Johnstone of the Edinburgh Academy and Mr R. S. Rait, Fellow of New College, Oxford, who have read my proofs. I must also record my debt of gratitude to the Editors for the great kindness and courtesy they have shown to me.