1831.] 



List of New Works. 



575 



17. Archibald Thomson, Christchurch, 

 for his machine for cutting corks. 



Robert Salmon, Woburn, for his 

 improved apparatus for using candles. 



William Bound and William Stone, 

 London, for their improved retorts for gas- 

 light apparatus. 



Benjamin Cook, Birmingham, for 

 his improved method of constructing solid 

 and hollow rollers and cylinders. 



William Owen, Wrexham, for his 

 portable table or box mangle. 



22. Philip Hutchinson Clay, London, 

 for his combination of machinery for mak- 

 ing and repairing roads. 



Seth Hunt, London, for his im- 

 proved escapements for clocks and chrono- 

 meters. 



Roger Didot, Paddington, for his 

 improved machine for paper making. 



George Manwaring, Lambeth, for 

 his improvements in steam engines. 



23. Seth Hunt, London, for his im- 

 provements in machinery for making pins. 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 



JOHN ABERNETHY, ESQ., F.R.S. 



Mr. Abernethy, one of the most emi- 

 nent surgeons of the day, and generally 

 regarded as the ablest lecturer in Lon- 

 don, on anatomy, surgery, and patho- 

 logy, was born in the year 1765. His 

 professional studies were commenced at 

 St. Bartholomew's Hospital as far back 

 as the year 1780 ; and, on the resigna- 

 tion of Mr. Pott, he became assistant 

 surgeon to that institution. He also 

 succeeded that gentleman as lecturer 

 on anatomy and surgery. In his mode 

 of teaching, Mr. Abernethy was not 

 very minute on anatomy, a thorough 

 knowledge of which, he conceived, could 

 be acquired only in the dissecting room ; 

 but the energy of his manner, and the 

 apposite and forcible illustrations which 

 he was accustomed to introduce, never 

 failed to fix the attention of his pupils, 

 and to impart a lively interest to all 

 that he delivered. One of his great ob- 

 jects was to impress on their minds, that 

 the education of a surgeon is never com- 

 plete, and that his wliole life should be 

 a course of study. He was opposed to 

 the division of surgery into distinct de- 

 partments ; such as that of oculist, au- 

 rist, &c. ; considering the whole as es- 

 sentially connected, and that no man, 

 properly educated, could be ignorant of 

 the diseases which those respective divi- 

 sions embrace. 



At an early period of life, Mr. Aber- 

 nethy came before the public as an au- 

 thor. He published u Surgical Obser- 

 vations," in two volumes ; and " Lec- 

 tures," in one volume, explanatory of 

 Mr. Hunter's opinions of the vital pro- 

 cesses ; with a Hunterian Oration, 

 giving a farther account of Mr. Hunter's 

 laborious and professional character. 

 New editions of these works appeared in 

 1806 and 1810, and possibly since. For 

 Dr. Rees's Cyclopcedia, Mr. Abernethy 

 wrote the anatomical articles included 

 under the letters A. and B. At one 

 period, we believe, he was violently op- 

 posed to the phrenological doctrines of 

 Gall and Spurzheim ; but, afterwards, 

 he became partially, if not wholly a con- 



vert and he had the manly candour to 

 acknowledge it. He did not, however, 

 assent to all the minute divisions of the 

 brain insisted on by phrenologists. 



When Dr. Marshall relinquished his 

 popular lectures at Thavies' Inn, Mr. 

 Abernethy's class increased, as did also 

 his practice. He was some time pro- 

 fessor of Anatomy to the Corporation of 

 Surgeons. In one of his essays, he pub- 

 lished an account of cases in which he 

 had tied the external iliac artery a 

 bold and meritorious operation. This 

 improvement in surgery established his 

 fame, and increased the credit of the 

 English school throughout Europe. 

 Under Mr. Abernethy's auspices, St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital attained a ce- 

 lebrity which it had never before en- 

 joyed. - 



On the death of Sir Charles Blicke, 

 he was elected surgeon in his room. He 

 was a Fellow of the Royal Society ; an 

 Honorary member of the Royal Medical 

 Society of Edinburgh, and of the Me- 

 dical Societies of Paris and Philadel- 

 phia, one of the Court of Assistants of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 

 and one of the Curators of their Mu- 

 seum. 



Mr. Abernethy's mode of treatment 

 in cases of dyspepsia, &c., was extremely 

 simple, yet unprecedentedly successful. 

 He was a man of eccentric habits ; and 

 ,in manners, frequently coarse, vulgar, 

 and as they have been described 

 almost brutal, even to women. No- 

 thing could excuse this : it could not 

 have been natural, therefore must have 

 been affected ; and all affectation of 

 eccentricity frequently its reality is 

 more or less disgusting. 



After a protracted indisposition, Mr. 

 Abernethy expired at Enfield on the 

 18th of April. 



SIR EDWARD BERRY, BART, &C. 



Sir Edward Berry, Baronet, of Cat- 

 ton, in the county of Norfolk, K.C.B., 

 Rear- Admiral of the Red, was the fourth 

 son of Sir Edward Berry, Esq., a mer- 

 chant in London, by Elizabeth, daugh- 



