 Shepherd’s dismay at the influence of Hume’s treatment of causality can be traced at least to a controversy in Edinburgh which began in 1802 when she was living nearby. The clergymen of the city opposed the appointment of an eminent mathematician to a chair at the University because of a passing favorable remark on Hume’s account of causality. They thought it encouraged atheism whereas the academic community insisted on the freedom of inquiry. With Hume back in public view, Thomas Brown published a small tract critical of some aspects of his doctrine but denying its supposed atheistic implication (Brown 1805). It was well received and Brown went on to write a full length book urging that causality implies nothing but the temporal succession and regular conjunction of sorts of events; it was first printed in 1818 and reprinted thereafter (Brown 1822). Shepherd mentions the Edinburgh incident and the still growing influence of Brown’s theory in the book she published in 1824. In her view, it is evidence of the public’s susceptibility to the pernicious influence of Hume on notions of causality. Both her books illustrate its ill effects by discussing the conclusions and theories of Thomas Lawrence, a controversial Lecturer in Physiology (Paoletti 2011: 49). 