838 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in starving animals, furnislied tlie proof experimentally and qualita- 

 tively; and Qnain's claim was freely admitted by Vircliow and 

 Paget." Previous to this he had published, early in his career at 

 University College Hospital (1845), contributions on Bright's Dis- 

 ease of the Kidneys, and on Injuries to the Valves of the Heart. His 

 Lumleian lecture before the Iloyal College of Surgeons in 1872 

 dealt with Diseases of the Muscular Walls of the Heart. 



The Dictionary of Medicine, on which Dr. Quain's leisure time 

 had been spent for several years since 1875, appeared in 1882, and 

 met a real want, for Copeland's Dictionary had gone out of date, and 

 Reynolds's System was not intended to be an encyclopedic book of 

 reference. The Dictionary first appeared as a volume of nineteen 

 hundred pages, and was the joint work of a very large number of 

 prominent medical writers, among whom Dr. Quain himself and 

 his editorial coadjutors. Dr. Frederick Roberts and Dr. Mitchell 

 Bruce, contributed largely. The work, according to the Lancet, " ad- 

 mirably filled the want long felt by the medical profession of a thor- 

 oughly convenient and at the same time exhaustive book of reference. 

 It had the additional advantage of being thoroughly brought up to 

 the knowledge of the day, for, as its editor remarked in the preface, 

 although it occupied some years in production, each part of it was so 

 arranged as to permit of alteration and addition up to the very time 

 of going to press. The editor's own articles chiefly dealt with affec- 

 tions of the heart." The Lancet points out that Sir Richard Quain's 

 faculty for the arrangement of facts in such an order as to convey 

 them to the mind of the reader in a succession which makes the whole 

 train of reasoning symmetrical is particularly noticeable in the essay 

 on Fatty Degeneration of the Heart, already mentioned, and is also 

 traceable to but little less an extent in the articles on Angina Pectoris, 

 Aneurism of the Heart, and Diseases of the Bronchial Tubes, and in 

 the general remarks on Disease. 



In 1885 Dr. Quain delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal 

 College of Physicians, taking for his subject The Healing Art in 

 its Historic and Prophetic Aspects, and beginning his address with 

 citations of the adverse remarks that had been made as to the progress 

 of medicine by Lloffmann, Gregory, Sir William Hamilton, and 

 others. In refutation of these statements he mentioned many curi- 

 ous and amusing instances of extraordinary superstitions concerning 

 medicine and surgery from which mankind had freed itself. As 

 a speaker he was not eloquent, and it is admitted that there was 

 even a lack of breadth and dignity in his presentation of a subject; 

 yet the Lancet commends the addresses he made at the meetings of 

 the Medical Council as showing his familiarity with the details and 

 the clearness of his memory on all subjects, and as presenting prac- 



