John Conolly

“ Darwall, painful to be read, painful to write, has been but too much the general history of young physicians. Occupied in the task of relieving human sufferings, encountering fatigue and danger, and with few of the rewards of ambitious life before them, often stimulated solely by the desire of doing good, they are too frequently a prey to cares and pains, far worse than those from which they are exerting themselves to relieve others: and whilst they carry comfort and hope into every sick chamber, feel those blessings still denied to themselves. ”

“ That the Transactions should preserve some record of a physician who had already risen to great estimation among his provincial brethren, and whose life was passed in professional labours, and, eventually, forfeited in their prosecution, is but a simple act of justice. That such a record should be made by myself, is but part of a sacred debt of friendship, due to the memory of one with whose virtues I had opportunities of becoming thoroughly acquainted; and whose death I shall not cease to lament as long as my own existence continues. ”

“ Darwall's character in every light, and proved to me, what, indeed, I entertained no previous doubts concerning, his love of every kind of learning, his acuteness and candour as a critic, his high sense of honour, his unwearied assiduity, and his entire freedom from the meanness and selfishness, the development of which poisons almost every association of men, for whatever purposes. ”

“ Darwall united extensive learning, a large acquaintance with modern literature, and no small knowledge of several branches of science; for, in truth, there was no subject which had ever occupied the human understanding, on which he could be said to be quite uninformed, whilst with many he was very fully acquainted. His great general attainments, and his professional proficiency, were owing, doubtless, in the first place, to extraordinary mental capacity; and, in the second, to his never having allowed his time to be encroached upon by what less ambitious men consider pleasurable engagements. ”

“ The Medical Society, however, of which I have thus spoken, with, I hope, not an unpardonable garrulousness, was still but a place of relaxation to Dr. Darwall; and he did not always willingly give up an evening to its business. He felt that the days of a student's life are few and precious; and that those who neglect them, will long repent that they forgot such days would not last for ever. ”

“ From no store-house of illustration may the pathologist gather ampler materials of the effect of the depressing passions, than from his own profession. He may there perceive, in instances too many, how perpetual care may interrupt each healthy function, and induce disorders which no medical art can cure. Highly educated, sensitive, accustomed to some of the elegancies of life, their habits not well fitting them for worldly competitions, how many have I known who have suffered every pang which common difficulties could inflict on noble minds, and, after suffering for a time, have sunk ”

“ Darwall's life of which I have now treated, was one in which his hopes were yet undiminished, and his cares were not so accumulated as heavily to oppress him; yet, either from constant over-exertion, or a constitutional disposition to melancholy, or that consciousness, already alluded to, of possessing few popular qualities to set off his merit, his letters often bespoke a most deplorable depression of mind. ”

“ As his youth had been passed without irregularity, so his maturer years were passed with uniform and strict propriety. He was fastidious as to the society of females, indifferent to music, he never played cards, and conviviality had no charms for him. As too often happens with studious men, he was, to a certain degree, insensible to the pleasures even of domestic life, although always to be found at home, and always evincing an extreme anxiety concerning the education of his daughters, and every prospective circumstance connected with the happiness of the objects of his tenderest affection. ”

“ Medical men are not strangers to the scenes of bereavement which are presented by families overtaken by such sudden and hopeless calamities; and to the sacred sorrows of those who loved him I shall attempt to give no expression. But far beyond the limits of that house of mourning was felt the sorrow which Dr. Darwall's death occasioned. His friends, and the whole medical profession, felt that a most valuable member of society had been taken from them: his neighbours, and the inhabitants of Birmingham in general, strongly expressed the concern this unexpected loss had occasioned them ”

“ When it is considered, too, how many records of a similar kind must, at the death of each observant practitioner, share the same fate; how many designs are left unfinished; how many valuable thoughts pursued a little way and lost; we see a strong additional recommendation thus afforded, of every kind of meeting and society of medical practitioners, either local, or, as in this great Association, more general, by which the isolated knowledge of many minds may be concentrated, proved by multiplied comparisons, and so classified as to advance the science of medicine more rapidly. ”

“ Far from adding to the innumerable examples of those who, boasting of a classical education, retain little love of ancient learning, and acquire as little of modern literature, he preserved, in all circumstances, a fondness for those liberal studies which have, in all ages, been acknowledged to adorn success, and mitigate the unavoidable trials of adversity. ”

“ Every physician and surgeon of the hospital and of the dispensary; almost all the lecturers and pupils of the medical school of Birmingham; many of the practitioners from surrounding towns, and a great number of the principal inhabitants, followed the procession, through crowded and silent streets, to the grave. The funeral service of the church, which none can hear at any time quite unaffected, was read with impressive solemnity by the Rev. Mr. Hook, whose well-known regard for him for whom he performed that last office of friendship, added to its deep effect on this most sad occasion. ”

“ Take from them the hatred of their neighbours, and the privilege of “ dealing damnation” on all who differ from them, and all that they called their religion has left them. With them, a readiness to raise a party cry is a symbol of orthodoxy, and justifies the most indecent neglect of the true interests of the church. If Dr. Darwall sometimes appeared to countenance such vulgar bigotry, he could not escape imputations alike unjust and degrading. ”

“ A friend and neighbour, who knew him most intimately, a surgeon of the highest respectability, who had daily opportunities of seeing him for many successive years, and whose friendly offices only ceased when all human attention became in vain, has so well described his habits and character as a practitioner, in a letter with which he has favoured me, that it would be unjust to Dr. Darwall's memory not to quote his own words. ”

“ Man's wordly wisdom is as vain as his disquietude. All these expectations, which I was fully justified in representing to him, and which he, at times, indulged in with reasonable hope, were frustrated at once. ”

“ There is something wrong in their position when such examples are not infrequent; and as there are few physicians who, having conquered their difficulties, could endure the bare idea of going through the struggle again, it becomes a serious question how far any members of the profession are justified, if not possessed of an ample fortune, in devoting themselves to a branch of practice which holds out no promise of a competency until two-thirds of the usual term of human life have been passed in anxiety. ”

“ But no member of the church less deserved to be numbered with the mob of the bitter and the intolerant: and if he, occasionally, appeared more to favour them than beseemed a man of his acquirements and understanding, this fault was more than atoned for by the sincerity and the fervour of his own piety, and by his irreproachable life. ”

“ We had, for several months before this time, been projecting the establishment of a new Medical Review; and one of the results of this journey was an engagement to assist Dr. Copland in editing the London Medical Repository, of which a number appeared on the first of every month. This kind of labour, than which nothing can be more irksome to men of middle age, is particularly attractive to younger writers, and we entered on our task with much enthusiasm. It requires a bold man, Montesquieu says, to make a reviewer; for he must make up his mind to make a hundred enemies a month. ”

“ All proud attempts to account for God's doings end in dissatisfaction: our hopes are baffled by the ignorance with which our life is encompassed; and our affections find no solace but in the everlasting truth that the power on which we all depend, is associated with perfect wisdom and unfailing goodness. ”

“ There are few who, looking back on those studious, temperate, happy years, can say that time has brought them any thing more valuable; nay, there are doubtless many who, amidst the vexations, the animosities, the distractions, and the struggles that have since befallen or engaged them, have often wished that their lives could have been passed in that academic seclusion to which few worldly feelings found their way, and in which science could be tranquilly pursued. ”

“ In the warm debates which ensued on the question of expelling the poet, and which were several times adjourned, the society exhibited a picture of the larger world of strife, but without the breaking up of friendships among those who then contended for one side or the other, with an earnestness on which they doubtless often look back with some degree of amusement. ”

“ Darwall's memory, to whom the allusion to the pleasure a youth, so disposed, would experience on first going to Edinburgh, will recall emotions of a very agreeable kind. To a young medical student, anxious to become accomplished in his profession, and expecting its highest honours as the reward of some years of delightful study, the approach to Edinburgh, where, not to mention other honoured names, Gregory then taught in the chair of physic, Monro and Barclay lectured on anatomy, and Gordon on physiology, was an æra never, amidst future cares and changes, to be forgotten. ”

“ The governors of the hospital never had a medical officer more desirous of efficiently performing his duties; and he shewed the interest he took in the advancement of the pupils, by immediately instituting clinical lectures; thus adding to his own labours, at a period when his time was daily becoming more valuable to him. His patience in investigating a disease was only exceeded by his perspicacity in detecting it, and his anxiety to cure it. ”

“ In May, 1823, I paid my first visit to him in Birmingham, and found him as laborious, and as full of ambition, as when a student. He had much increased his stock of books, but had exchanged the habit of sitting up late to read them, for the better custom of rising very early, which practice he long persevered in. He had been elected physician to the General Dispensary, and devoted a large portion of his time to its duties. In one of his books I find the names of more than three thousand poor patients seen by him, during the ten years in which he was attached to the dispensary ”

“ SINCE the publication of the preceding volume of the Transactions, the Association has been deprived, by a premature death, of a member whose contributions would, in all probability, frequently have added value to these pages; a physician whose learning, experience, and never-ceasing ardour for knowledge, alike fitted him for promoting some of the best designs contemplated at the foundation of this society. ”

“ No student ever went to Edinburgh with a higher ambition, or with a firmer determination to waste no time whilst there, than Dr. Darwall. He had some letters of introduction to celebrated individuals, but, like most Edinburgh students who become interested in the business of the place, U believe he gradually left off all society, except that of his fellow students, and those of his teachers whom he had the advantage of being acquainted with. ”

“ The contemplation of the numerous practical memoranda accumulated by so industrious and able a physician, papers never, perhaps, after such inspection as I can afford time to give them, to occupy the careful regard of any human eye, suggests a melancholy commentary on the years of ardent exertion in which they were compiled, and on the faithful observations thus appearing to have been made, with great pains, only to be, when made, neglected. ”

“ Few men had fewer faults requiring palliation, and few more of those sterling merits to which a laboured eulogy could add nothing. If his spirit, freed from its earthly bonds, is conscious of what is done on earth, I well know that it would not be soothed by flattery, or approve of any syllable of praise offered at the expense of truth.
Dr. John Darwall was the son of the Rev. John Darwall, who was the incumbent of St. John's Chapel, at Deritend, and one of the masters of the Free Grammar School, in Birmingham, until his death in 1828. ”