[4] At 3 am, John Stewart, aged 70, who had been visiting the hotel regularly for the previous 40 years, was the first guest to fall ill with vomiting and drooped eyelids.

But by the time he came later in the morning, several others had become ill, and he in turn called upon T. K. Monro, Regius Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics at Glasgow University, who happened to be nearby.

[4] The public prosecutor was now informed, and the incident became a legal case and crime scene; primary suspect was the hotel's owner until Monro suggested food-borne disease.

[6] Medical officer of health William MacLean reported to the public prosecutor that "the symptoms and course of the disease are identical in essentials with those described by Van Ermengem as his ‘second type’ in his investigations of sausage poisoning in the eighteen-nineties".

Twenty lots of sandwiches were made that day using the contents of two containers of potted wild duck paste and ham and tongue.

The most significant sample was from one of the ill gillie's leftover potted duck sandwich, which was buried in a garden by a colleague to avoid the hens eating it.

Four jars of the meat were purchased from Lazenby's of London in June 1922 and included "chicken, ham, and turkey, all mixed with tongue; and wild duck".

[5] The future air marshal Sir Thomas Elmhirst described how, as a young guest at the hotel, he narrowly avoided being poisoned when he joined his brother and parents there for a week of fishing.

Elmhirst recorded how a judge in the room next to him suffered a painful death while a major and his wife, who were guests, gave their sandwich to their gillie as they never ate potted meat.

[4] The incident ultimately led to anti-toxins being made more easily available and packaging of preserved food was changed to allow easier identification of its origin.