This is probably the most "high profile" case amongst Cullen's consultations. As recorded by Boswell in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1773 Johnson, the leading literary figure of his generation had dined with Cullen, as Scotland's leading physician, in Edinburgh on the evening of 16 August, 1773, when the physician 'talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep'.

Boswell's concern for his mentor and friend is obvious from this appeal made at a time when Johnson was starting to fail. Indeed, anxious for advice, on the same day Boswell - who was at home in Edinburgh - wrote similar letters to other leading physicians including one to Cullen's Edinburgh colleague Dr John Hope. Cullen's response is typically cautious: he clearly does not want to raise Boswell's hopes nor those of the patient. Indeed Cullen would have been aware that Johnson had a keen, informed interest in medicine and would not be easily taken-in by false hopes. More detailed contextual information is provided in the footnotes to the actual letters.

The literature addressing Johnson's various illnesses, much of it rather conjectural, is very substantial but for a reliable, important study see Samuel Wiltshire, Samuel Johnson in the Medical World: the Doctor and the Patient (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); the final chapter 'A Therapeutic Friendship' provides an interesting context for Boswell's concerns over Johnson in the Spring of 1784.

David. E. Shuttleton

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