for ensuring their unvarying motionless position, so essential to their tranquillity and re-union; for suggesting and applying suitable means to soothe, or correct the morbid actions of susceptible surfaces; for discriminating the great variety of external local diseases; and for performing the various and complicated operations of surgery; that it requires the whole time and ability of any individual to attain even moderate perfection in this department of medical science. Whilst the no less extensive and impor tant task of unravelling the intricacies of the symptoms, produced by internal diseases, so as to trace them to their several sources, and consequently to decide upon their proper treatment, and of modifying the remedies employed, so as to adapt them to the varieties of circumstances and constitutions, equally demands the concentrated observation and reflection of the physician. Indeed, the division of medicine into two principal departments, which custom has established, seems also to have received the fullest sanction of experience; and, if we were not to acquiesce in it, we should subvert the institutions of society, and throw the whole profession into confusion. So much, also, is to be known and done in either department, that if we invade each other's province, we must neglect properly to cultivate and improve our own.

"Both physicians and surgeons must understand structure and function, and the changes produced in each, by disorder and disease. There is no short cut, nor royal road' to the attainment of medical knowledge. The path

which we have to pursue is long, difficult, and unsafe. In our progress, we must frequently take up our abode with death and corruption, we must adopt loathsome diseases for our familiar associates, or we shall never be acquainted with their nature and dispositions; we must risk, nay, even injure our own health, in order to be able to preserve, or restore that of others. Yet, if we do this, our profession will be held in the highest respect; not, as in ancient times, merely on account of the beneficence of its object, but, because it will be further perceived, that the means are adequate to the accomplishment."

Abernethy was a great advocate for what are called post mortem examinations; dissections, namely, in order to ascertain the probable cause of death in particular instances. And, in the same oration, from whence I have taken the preceding extract, he has introduced the following anecdote of John Hunter, which, although it may have often appeared in print before, I shall be excused for repeating here, to show the different aspects in which the same humane persons are capable of appearing, according to the better or worse government of their passions:

"Mr. Hunter, who was never afraid of speaking his mind, had attended, in concert with another surgeon, a fatal case of disease in the child of a gentleman of opulence and worldly consequence. He had been much interested in the case; he had considered it, as he was wont to do, deliberately and intently; and, believing that much good might result from ascertaining its nature, he

had requested permission to examine the body, which was refused. He went to the house of the father, in company

with the other surgeon, and tried all his art of rhetoric and persuasion, but in vain. When he became convinced that his object was unattainable, he was standing, said the relator of this anecdote, with his back to the fire, and he put his hands into his pockets. I saw, continued he, by his countenance, that a storm was brewing in his mind. Mr. Hunter, however, gravely and calmly addressed the master of the house, in the following manner :—‹ Then, Sir, you will not permit the examination to be made? 'It is impossible,' was the reply. Then, Sir,' said Mr. Hunter, I heartily hope, that yourself, and all your family, nay, all friends, may your die of the same disease, and that no one may be able to afford them any assistance; ' and, so saying, he departed. Such a wish, I am convinced, was foreign from his benevolent mind; as indeed is manifested by the very terms of it, which involve the innocent with the offending. Temporary irritation alone incited him to adopt this mode of expressing his strong conviction of what it became equally his duty to perform, and theirs to permit, for the attainment of knowledge, the most important to humanity."-Hunterian Oration, p. 40.

I do not believe that Abernethy, with all his abruptness of manners, would ever have been betrayed into such a maledictory exclamation; yet, it is very probable that, through his great admiration of John Hunter's professional enthusiasm, and character generally, and the favourable

balance which he was thence disposed to strike between his virtues and his failings, he was himself less upon his guard, than he would otherwise have been, against hasty and intemperate expressions. Still he never, in his lectures, mentioned the preceding anecdote, without qualifying his eulogy of his greatest favourite, by declaring his disapprobation of such bursts of passion. In fact, he steadfastly maintained, in this, as in all other points of conduct, that the language of Scripture is the voice of reason, and that the physician is equally bound, with the Christian moralist, to inculcate the extreme importance of

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keeping the heart with all diligence." He saw the justice of the Scriptural injunction more clearly, from his knowledge of the close connexion between diseases of this vital and the tempers of men. Ebullitions of anger, organ, that madness of the moment, are well known to produce, by repetition, organic diseases of the heart; whilst the formation of such diseases, by their re-action on the mind, begets a constitutional irritability, which no subsequent discipline can overcome. John Hunter died suddenly, from disease of the heart; and it is not improbable, that Abernethy inculcated the lesson of self-government, with the more earnestness, from a consciousness of the difficulties with with he may have had to contend in his own person.

Upon other occasions, when the subject of his lecture admitted of cheerful, or even of humorous illustration, he exhibited a vein of pleasantry, to which his auditory responded most readily. None of his pupils could forget

the droll face he put up, when, in illustration of the particular action of the fronto-occipital muscle, he related the anecdote of a man, who could wag the long tail, which it was then the fashion to construct, and leave appended to the back part of the head, so comically, as to make any one he chose, burst into laughter. In fact, at the period to which I refer, Abernethy himself wore a tail, which he contrived so to move from side to side, as greatly to increase the effect of the anecdote he was relating. And here I do not know how I can better give some idea of his usual familiar mode of lecturing, than by transmitting a page or two from my own manuscript copy of his lectures :—" The fronto-occipitalis is a thin cutaneous muscle, beneath the integuments of the head, consisting of a broad aponeurosis in the middle, and of two patches of muscular fibres behind and before. It is so connected with the scalp, as to give us the power of corrugating it at pleasure. A small puncture of the scalp has led to inflammation of the aponeurosis, which must be relieved, by making a free transverse section, thereby setting the aponeurotic fibres at liberty. This aponeurosis is easily separated from the pericranium, and accompanies the scalp which Indians take from their enemies. They make a circular section through the integuments, including the aponeurosis, and drag up the scalp by the hair, as a boy would do a sucker. By the frontal portion, the eye-brows are elevated; whilst, by another muscle, the corrugator super

cilii,' they are drawn downwards and towards the nose.