Genus Blaeria

For Patrick Blair, MD, FRS (1666–1728), Scottish physician, surgeon and medico-botanical author, who practiced in Dundee, London and Boston. His three major publications were Osteographia Elephantina (1713), in which he describes his dissection of an elephant and anatomical findings; An Account of the Dissection of a Child (1717), in which he described a child who had pyloric stenosis; and Practice of Physick, Anatomy, and Surgery (1718). In 1720 he gave a lecture on the sexual characteristics and fertilisation of the plant, which caught the attention of Linnaeus. He was elected a member of the Royal Society. During the Jacobite Rising of 1715, he was arrested, thrown into prison and sentenced to death. As a result of the intercession of Hans Sloane, Richard Mead and others, he was eventually pardoned.