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Show Pride of Scotland Not Alcohol Addict Sir James Crichton Browne, a medical med-ical man, has published a postinorten diagnosis oq Robert Burns, the Scotch poet, which aims to break down the sad nnd sodden figure of tradition and substitute one of an Ayrshire plowboy who was "on the whole a temperate fellow for his time," though cursed with a poor constitution, the New York Times usserts. Sir James submits that heart disease dis-ease arising out of rheumatism acquired ac-quired In youth, and not drink and debauchery, ao generally held, cuused the poet's "unconscious suicide." lie goes over the records und shows that not a single contemporary of Burns noted In him symptoms which might Indicate the effect, direct or Indirect, of chronic alcoholism. The accepted legend springs apparently ap-parently from the Currie biography Now Currie, Sir James points out, figured in his day as a temperance zealot. He gathered and preserved In his "Life of Burns" much information informa-tion that might otherwise have passed forgotten, but the reformer won out He seized the opportunity to point a moral, and In so doing deformed his tale. |