(c.1716 - 90), physician, b. Ireland; Leiden U.; surgeon in Dublin; chief surgeon to the forces 1756; m. 1758 Ldy. Caroline Keppel, dau. of 2nd E. of Albemarle; sergt. surgeon to King; surgeon gen. to the forces 1786.
1771 - 2 Leghorn (8 Dec. 1771), Pisa (11 - 22 Dec.), Leghorn (23 Dec.), Naples (29 Dec. 1771 - 23 Feb. 1772); see William, Duke of Gloucester
1777 Trent (15 Jul.), Venice
(17 Sep.) [England, 23 Oct.]
In 1771 Adair was sent by the King with Dr Richard Jebb to attend the Duke of Gloucester, who had fallen ill during his tour of Italy.1 They arrived at Leghorn on 8 December, and reached the Duke at Pisa on the 11th. They sailed with him from Leghorn on 23 December to Naples, attending his asthma and an abcess in his side; the Duke was well enough to leave Naples for Rome on 23 February 1772. Three years later, acting on behalf of the Duke of Gloucester, Adair sent the Pope a collection of surgical instruments (later deposited in the hospital of Santo Spirito).2
In 1777 Jebb and Adair were again called urgently from England to attend the Duke at Trent, where they arrived on 15 July.3 On 14 September the Duchess of Gloucester told Horace Walpole that the doctors were about to take a five-day holiday in Venice, where Adair alone arrived on 17 September.4 Jebb and Adair then accompanied the Duke and Duchess on their return to England. The King created Jebb a Baronet, but Adair 'with equal propriety and good sense, begged leave to decline' a similar reward.5
Adair's sale (Christie's, 21 May 1790) included four lots of bronzes and marbles, and many Italian old masters 'the whole selected with great taste at a most Liberal Expence during his Residence Abroad'. Two 'fine Grecian heads on therms', bought at the sale by Richard Payne Knight, passed via Townley to the British Museum-probably the two heads of Dionysius which Adair was said to have acquired at Baiae in, or shortly after, December 1771, soon after their excavation.6
1. Wal.Corr., 5:23, 356 - 8, 369 - 71, 384. 2. [J.W. Newman], Memoirs of the Life of Robert Adair, 37. See Montaiglon, 13:122, and Wal.Corr., 5:24, 129. 3. See Wal.Corr., 24:314 - 26;
36:138 - 49. 4. ASV IS 760. 5. Newman (at n2), 36 - 7. T.A. Malloch, Bull. of the New York Acad. of Medicine, 2nd ser., 13[1937]:576 - 96. 6. Michaelis, 103.