Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 329 



on fire, and he could save only one book from the conflagration, it 

 should be the Lectures of Dr. Young.' 



In 1810, Dr. Young was appointed Physician to St. George's 

 Hospital ; but his private practice, though respectable, Was never 

 extensive. His biographer has, we think, pointed out the true cause 

 with great discrimination : ' In his profession, his published labours 

 would prove him to have been of the most learned of scientific phy- 

 sicians, and his judgment and acuteness were equally great ; but in 

 the practice of medicine he was not one of those who were likely to 

 win the most extended occupation among the multitude. He was 

 averse to some of the ordinary methods by which it is acquired. He 

 never affected an assurance which he did not feel, and had, perhaps, 

 rather a tendency to fear the injurious effects which might eventually 

 result from the application of powerful remedies, than to any over- 

 weening confidence in their immediate efficacy. His treatises bear 

 the same impress. That on Consumption is a most striking instance 

 of his assiduity in collecting all recorded facts ; and his abstinence 

 from drawing inferences from isolated cases, or putting forth that 

 which he did not feel was established with certainty. Possibly he 

 herein was an example that increase of knowledge does not tend to 

 increase of confidence, and that those whose acquirements are the 

 greatest meet in the progress of their investigations with most that 

 leads to distrust.' 



Dr. Young had previously given a course of lectures on the Ele- 

 ments of the Medical Sciences at the Middlesex Hospital, of which 

 a syllabus was published in 1809. These lectures, he himself said, 

 were little frequented, 'on account of the usual miscalculation of the 

 lecturer, who gave his audience more information in a given time 

 than it was in their power to follow.' 



In 1813, he published his 4 Introduction to Medical Literature, 

 including a System of Practical Nosology ;' a work of considerable 

 labour and of the highest practical utility. To this work he prefixed 

 a preliminary * Essay on the Study of Physic,' partly founded on 

 that of the German Professor Vogel, in which is contained his own 

 conception of the qualities requisite to constitute a well-educated 

 physician, by which it will appear that his notion of the character 

 was elevated above the ordinary standard of humanity : ' he enume- 

 rates nearly every possible quality of which man could wish, but of 

 which few could hope, the attainment.' 



Dr. Young was a frequent contributor to the Quarterly Review, 

 having been induced, at the instance of his friend Mr. George Ellis, 

 to furnish articles on medical subjects. His communications, how- 

 ever, soon branched into other lines, connected with the higher de- 

 partments of science, and containing frequently more of original 

 research than of immediate criticism. In the catalogue of his writ- 

 ings, which accompanies this memoir, will be found a list of his papers 

 in that journal. We shall only here mention an admirable philo- 

 logical dissertation on the Structure of Language, contained in the 



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