George Thomas Bettany

“ His busy public life had in later years left him no leisure, and his life was shortened by over-work. In private life his social qualities and his honourable nature were most highly esteemed, and, like his friend, Professor Edward Forbes, he had a genius for enlivening a children's party. ”

“ Lord Cockburn (Memorials, p. 105) describes Gregory as ‘a curious and excellent man, a great physician, a great lecturer, a great Latin scholar, and a great talker, vigorous and generous, large of stature, and with a strikingly powerful countenance.’ He says that Gregory's popularity was increased by his controversies. He was never selfish nor entirely wrong in them; and the public preferred the best laugher, though with the worst cause. Gregory, in fact, won general regard among all classes of people outside his profession. He was frequently very generous, especially to his pupils. ”

“ His strong belief that life was a principle of force separate from and anterior to organisation was never clearly and consistently put forward; but it was raised by his pupils into a dogma, especially by Abernethy, and was an important subject of controversy before modern chemical and physical discoveries had given precision to physiological ideas. One of Hunter's most distinctive merits was his grasp of living beings in one view, as one science. He was an all-round naturalist with an object, that of explaining life and organisation, and discovering principles of surgery. ”

“ Yet he had qualities which for many years made his name supreme among British teachers of medicine. As a lecturer he had great powers of interesting his students and inspiring them with enthusiasm. Dr. Anderson, one of his pupils, highly commends his excellent arrangement, his memory of facts, and the ease, vivacity, variety, and force of his lectures, which were delivered extemporaneously. To uncommon patience he joined great regard for truth. ”

“ Dick was never married, and was very solitary in his habits. His character is best revealed by his letters, which show him to have had a deep love of nature, both its history and its beauties, and a stern resolve to get at facts at first hand. He would labour for weeks, at every possible moment, to chisel out a single important specimen from the hardest rock, or when crippled with rheumatism would spend hours in emptying ponds on the sea shore to disinter fossils he could not otherwise obtain. ‘I have nearly killed myself several times with over-exertion,’ he says. ”

“ On 1 March 1883, while returning from pursuing an elephant, he was killed by the accidental discharge of his rifle, which caught in the thick jungle. His work, so far as it had gone, and his diaries give evidence of high promise as a scientific explorer. He had the true explorer's temperament, power of command, fertility of resource in presence of danger, cool courage and self-control, and was a bright and engaging companion. ”

“ Hunter's ' Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gunshot Wounds' is his most important work; it is a compound of physiology, pathology, and surgery, and, while defective in regarding the red corpuscles as the least important part of the blood, is full of original observations and remarks. His account of inflammation necessarily loses value, since modern observations have revealed its nature, but it marked a great advance in knowledge, and for many years it stimulated the progress of surgery, and some of his views have been in recent times found to be truer than others which supplanted them. ”

“ Busts of Forbes were subscribed for and placed in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, and in the Edinburgh Museum, and a bronze medal and prize of books were founded, to be given to the most deserving student in natural history at the Royal School of Mines.
Forbes lived an unusually full life, occupied in promoting science and arousing enthusiasm and awakening intelligence in others. To almost every department of biology he rendered much service, especially by connecting various branches together and illustrating one by the other. ”

“ On his return from Paris, Cooper devoted himself largely to study and teaching, and succeeded in developing the subject of surgery into a separate course of lectures from anatomy. At first too theoretical to please, he soon found that his strength lay in discussing his own cases, with all the illustration that he could supply from memory of other cases. He thus became a most interesting practical lecturer, and meddled little with theory. In 1793 he was selected to lecture on anatomy at the College of Surgeons, which office he held till 1796 with great success. ”

“ Forster was a good practical surgeon, prompt and decisive in the wards, and by no means lacking in boldness as an operator. He was the first to perform gastrostomy in England in 1858, and went to Aberdeen to study Pirrie's procedure of acupressure in 1867, and in various papers in the Pathological and Clinical Society's ‘Transactions,’ and by his reports of surgical cases in ‘Guy's Hospital Reports,’ showed enlarged views and keen observation. ”

“ Gull was pre-eminent as a clinical physician. His penetration was remarkable, and he exercised a sort of fascination over his patients. His great powers of endurance enabled him to see a succession of patients for long hours together, and he prided himself on the deliberate care with which he examined each case. In consultation his individuality was at times too self-assertive, and he was less popular among the leaders of his profession than with his patients. ”

“ Few men have ever done so much original work while occupied with general medical practice, as his successive papers in the Royal Society’s ‘Transactions’ and ‘Proceedings; the ‘Medico-Chirurgical’ transactions,’ the ‘Journal of the Microscopical Society.' Beale’s ‘Archives of Medicine,' &c., testify. ”

“ His careful preparation, his graphic descriptions of disease, and his candour, simplicity of thought, and comprehensiveness of view, soon made his clinical lectures renowned, especially as he delivered them in English instead of Latin. He taught his students to observe the course of nature in diseases, to distinguish between essential and accidental symptoms, and to carefully discriminate between the action of remedies and the curative operations of nature. ”

“ Backed by overwhelming influence, Forbes was elected to the Edinburgh professorship and was pressed to commence lecturing at once. His leave-taking of the Geological Society on going north was marked by an eloquent speech from Sir R. Murchison, dwelling especially on Forbes's power of attaching every one to him.
The Edinburgh work was entered on with an eager zeal far too exhausting. Crowded audiences stimulated the lecturer's powers to the highest degree. He set vigorously to work to remodel Jameson's museum. Geological excursions with large numbers of students filled up each week. ”

“ Hutton ranks as the first great British geologist, and the independent originator of the modern explanation of the phenomena of the earth's crust by means of changes still in progress. 'No powers,' he says, 'are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of except those of which we know the principle.' He first drew a marked line between geology and cosmogony. ”

“ In June 1871 Garrod was elected prosector to the Zoological Society, and he pursued his work in the dissecting room of the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, with devoted ardour till his death. The great quantity of material continually accumulating there for research drew him into almost exclusively zoological work. The anatomy of birds came his favourite study, and he was soon able to work out on a more extensive scale many of Nitzsch's observations on pterylography, and to add many new facts, especially in the myology of birds. ”

“ Egerton was not merely a collector but a careful scientific observer, and a good naturalist. He had also great business ability and good judgment, and was of a genial and kindly disposition, which made him very popular with political opponents. His collection of fossil fishes, as well as that of Lord Enniskillen, has been acquired for the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington.
Egerton published several catalogues of his collection of fossil fishes. ”

“ Johnson in his last illness, and was termed by him, in allusion to his benevolent disposition, ‘a sweet-blooded man.’ When Cruikshank was lancing the dying man's legs to reduce his dropsy, Johnson called out to him, ‘I want life, and you are afraid of giving me pain—deeper, deeper.’ Often a bright companion of literary men, Cruikshank was held back by morbid susceptibility, and cannot be said to have done himself full justice. ”

“ Hutton's 'Theory of Rain' was a valuable contribution to science. He asserted that since the amount of moisture which the air can contain increases with the temperature, on the mixture of two masses of air of different temperatures part of the moisture must be condensed. He inferred that the rainfall in a locality is due to the humidity of the air and the intermingling of currents of air of different temperatures. Much of Hutton's physical work is obsolete, owing to his adoption of the phlogiston theory of heat and to his want of mathematical knowledge. ”

“ Theodore Watts, an intimate friend for many years, characterises Latham as 'one who for brilliance of intellect and encyclopædic knowledge had, in conversation at least, scarcely an equal among his contemporaries, and who certainly was less enslaved by authority than any other man.' This independence of mind gave his literary work its success, despite his frequent obscurities of style and his occasional inaccuracy. ”

“ GRANT, ROGER (d. 1724) , quack oculist, having lost an eye as a soldier in the German emperor's service, set up as an oculist in Queen Anne's reign in Mouse Alley, Wapping, and contrived to get appointed oculist to Anne and to George I, and to acquire considerable wealth. He is satirically referred to us 'putting out eyes with great success' in No. 444 of the 'Spectator' (30 July 1712) . A sheet describing his professed cures is in the British Museum Library, and also an 'Account of a Miraculous Cure of a Young Man in Newington,' London, 1709, evidently written to discredit his pretensions. ”

“ Judging of others by himself, he was too confiding in friendship, and too careless in matters of business; consequently, from the one he was exposed to disappointment, and from the other involved in difficulties and embarrassments which tinged the colour of his whole life.' He died of dropsy, at Rome, 16 April 1820. ”

“ Congenial tastes led to Royle securing Falconer as his deputy during leave of absence, and in 1832 the latter succeeded his friend in charge of the botanic garden. The locality was most favourable for all kinds of natural history pursuits, and the proximity of the Siválik hills, as yet little explored, not only led Falconer to the determination of their tertiary age, but also to his discovery of a vast series of remarkable fossil mammals and reptiles. ”

“ The left eye remained perfect till advanced age. While at school at Heath, near Wakefield, Hey acquired a taste for science, and at fourteen was apprenticed to a surgeon at Leeds named Dawson. Between 1757 and 1759 he studied at St. George's Hospital, London, and became so skilful as a surgeon that as soon as he set up in practice at Leeds he treated the most serious cases, performing lithotomy, it is said, three times in his first year. In 1767 he was active in promoting the foundation of the Leeds Infirmary, being the only medical man on the building committee. ”

“ Fergusson's reputation is that of a brilliant operator and a great ‘conservative’ surgeon. The term conservative surgery, first applied by Fergusson in 1852 to operations for the preservation of parts of the body which would otherwise have been sacrificed, does not denote merely operations which he originated or improved, for James Syme [q. v.] had already been very successful in this line of procedure. But Fergusson extended the principle from the operation of excision of the elbow joint to many others. ”

“ At this time Charles Darwin was his intimate companion in study, and described him (Life, i. 38) as 'dry and formal in manner, with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust.' The numerous original papers he wrote at this period seemed to mark him out for a great career, and in June 1827 he was elected professor of comparative anatomy and zoology in the university of London, afterwards University College. ”

“ Before his graduation at Edinburgh Carpenter had become lecturer on medical jurisprudence at the Bristol Medical School, and he afterwards lectured there on physiology also. He found the anxieties of general medical practice too great for his keen susceptibilities, and undertook further literary work, including a useful and comprehensive ‘Popular Cyclopædia of Science,’ 1843. In 1844 he removed to London, gaining the post of Fullerian professor of physiology at the Royal Institution, and being elected a fellow of the Royal Society in the same year. ”

“ In 1783 Haygarth's plan of separate fever wards was adopted during an epidemic in Chester, whose progress was thus checked, and he was instrumental in introducing his system into other towns. His ‘Letter to Dr. Percival on the Prevention of Infectious Fevers,’ read to the Bath Literary and Philosophical Society, and published at Bath in 1801, is a model scientific treatise, and embodies those principles of isolation, ventilation, and cleanliness which can never go out of date. ”

“ He was an accomplished clinical physician and a pathologist of very wide grasp, a thinker capable of gathering with infinite patience facts from all quarters, and of arranging them with singular skill so as to make obscure points clear. ”

“ BROOKES, RICHARD (fl. 1750) , physician and author, has left but slight memorials of his life, except numerous compilations and translations on medicine, surgery, natural history, and geography, most of which went through several editions. He was at one time a rural practitioner in Surrey (Dedication of Art of Angling) . At some time previous to 1762 he had travelled both in America and Africa (Preface to Natural History) . He was an industrious compiler, especially from continental writers, and his 'General Gazetteer' supplied a manifest want. ”

“ At times he would amuse his companions by fantastic contortions of his body in imitation ‘of the elvish forms that he loved so much to design.’ Early in 1847 a remark of Forbes's led to the formation of the Palæontographical Society, which has done so much for British palæontology. In a lecture at the Royal Institution on 14 May, on ‘The Natural History Features of the North Atlantic,’ Forbes referred to the bearing of scientific research on deep-sea fisheries, and censured the government and the public for their neglect of the subject, which has only lately received much attention. ”

“ In response to memorials from the presidents of the chief scientific societies and from the British Association, a government grant of 1,000l. was made for preparing for exhibition the Indian fossils in the British Museum, which are still unarranged and embedded in rock, and Falconer was appointed to superintend the work in December 1844. The East India Company gave him employment and pay as if he were still in India, and at his instance a series of coloured casts of the most remarkable Siválik fossils was prepared, and sets were presented to the principal European museums. ”