74b THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tol. Like several distinguished Englishmen of the present day, anions 

 whom are to be named Mr. John Stuart Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 Dr. Carpenter's subsequent achievements cannot be traced to the train- 

 ing received at any of the public schools ; since his early instruction 

 was carried on entirely under his father's roof. Besides the ordinary 

 branches of an English lad's education, he devoted himself to physics 

 and chemistry, for which he already showed a sj>ecial taste and apti- 

 tude. His wish was to become a civil engineer, but, no suitable open- 

 ing presenting itself at this time in that profession, he yielded to the 

 desire of his family that he should study medicine. Mr. J. B. Estlin, 

 a general practitioner of high standing in Bristol, and brother-in-law 

 of Dr. Pritchard the ethnologist, having offered to take him as a pupil 

 and apprentice to the medical profession, an engagement to this effect 

 was entered into. This was in 1828. Besides receiving private in- 

 structions, Mr. Carpenter attended lectures at the Bristol Medical 

 School, and at the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Institution, and 

 had hospital practice at the Bristol Infirmary. In the winter of 1832, 

 the state of Mr. Estlin's health rendering it desirable that he should 

 make a voyage to the West Indies, Mr. Carpenter accompanied him 

 to St. Vincent, where he stayed several months, and also visited the 

 island of Grenada. 



On his return to Bristol, Mr. Carpenter resumed his medical studies 

 and practice. In 1834 he went to London, where he prosecuted his 

 studies at TTtiiversity College and Middlesex Hospital. It was at this 

 time, while attending the lectures of Dr. Grant on Comparative Anat- 

 omy, that he imbibed that special love for the subject which has re- 

 sulted in the production of those volumes on Physiology by which he 

 is most generally known. Having passed his examination at the Col- 

 lege of Surgeons and the Apothecaries' Hall, he went in 1835 to Edin- 

 burgh, where he devoted himself to professional studies, under the 

 able guidance of the distinguished men who at that time upheld the 

 fame of Edinburgh University as one of the first medical schools in 

 Europe. While here, he was elected the first of the four annual presi- 

 dents of the Royal Medical Society. 



After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, Mr. Carpenter ac- 

 cepted the lectureship on Medical Jurisprudence in the Bristol Medical 

 School, and at the same time commenced general practice in Bristol, 

 intending to devote what spare time he might have to scientific pur- 

 suits. About this time he became a frequent contributor to various 

 periodicals. Among the first of these contributions was a paper, " On 

 the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings," published 

 in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. In the British and 

 Foreign Medical Bevieio, of which he eventually became the editor, 

 his papers are remarkable alike for number and for varied contents. 

 The first, which appeared in the July number of 1837, was on "Vege- 

 table Physiology." This was succeeded in the following year by a 



