830 SIR THOMAS LAUDER BRUNTON. 



SIR THOMAS LAUDER BRUNTON (1844-1916) 



Foreign Honorary Member in Class II, Section 4, 1901. 



Thomas Lauder Brunton was born in Scotland, took his M. B. with 

 honors at Edinburgh in 1866, his M. D. in 1868, with a gold medal for 

 his thesis on Digitalis with Some Observations on the Urine. This 

 thesis was based on experiments on himself. His friend. Sir David 

 Ferrier, says in The Lancet, — " When experimenting on himself with 

 digitalis he lived a life of penance for six months; and he told me that 

 one of the greatest pleasures he ever experienced was when he felt at 

 liberty to eat and drink without having to weigh and measure his 

 ingesta and egesta." He was altogether too human to be an ascetic; 

 but for the sake of science he could mortify the flesh. In his first 

 Lettsomian lecture, 1885, the reading of which, as indeed of much of 

 Brunton's writings, might be of service to preachers of the present day 

 calories, alcohol-always-a-poison apostles, he says: 



' The nerves of taste, like those of sight and hearing, are nerves of 

 special sense, and are capable of education. But, while we usually 

 regard the education of the senses of sight and hearing as a noble thing, 

 we are too careless of the education of our taste, and look upon it 

 rather as something degrading. 



' Yet the education of the nerves of taste should be considered in the 

 same light as that of the other special senses; and cookery has, I 

 think, a perfect right to be ranked with music, painting, sculpture, 

 and architecture as one of the fine arts. The difference between 

 cookery and music, or painting, is, that while the objects which give 

 rise to sight and sound remain outside the body, we are obliged to 

 swallow the substances which excite sensations in our nerves of taste. 

 It is not quite sufficient to turn them over in the mouth and put them 

 out again, because the full sensation is only obtained just in the act 

 of swallowing. For this reason devotees to the art of cookery must 

 either be content with a moderate enjoyment of the pleasures of taste, 

 or consent, like some of the Roman emperors of old or German stu- 

 dents of the present day, to eject again the food or drink which they 

 have already taken and enjoyed. 



' Only rarely does one meet with a dinner wliich gives one the sense 

 of high artistic perfection, although I remember having partaken of 

 one such when enjo^ang the hospitality of a City company. Each 

 course seemed to excite an appetite for the one which succeeded, and 



