SKETCH OF W. B. CARPENTER. 539 



sume his studies on his return, at Bristol, then at University College, 

 London, and finally in the University of Edinburgh, where he received 

 the degree of M. D. in 1839. His graduating thesis, which gained 

 for him a gold medal, was on " The Physiological Inferences to be 

 deduced from the Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated 

 Animals," It attracted considerable attention on account of some 

 peculiar special views advanced in it, and it pointed out the direction 

 which his future studies were destined to take. Previous to his grad- 

 uation he had been appointed Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence in 

 the Bristol Medical School. He settled down to practice and married 

 in Bristol ; but, in 1844, feeling a distaste, according to Dr. Lankester, 

 for the profession of medicine, he removed to London in order to de- 

 vote himself entirely to a literary and scientific career. Here he was 

 appointed Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution, 

 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society ; in the next year he 

 became a lecturer in the London Hospital ; in 1847 a lecturer on 

 geology in the British Museum, one of the examiners of the London 

 University, and editor of the " British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgi- 

 cal Review " ; in 1849, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Univer- 

 sity College ; and in 1852, Principal of University Hall. 



Dr. Carpenter began the researches with which his name is associ- 

 ated and the publication of results upon them while still quite young. 

 Two books — Sir John Herschel's "Discourse on the Study of Natural 

 Philosophy," and Lyell's " Principles of Geology " — exerted a great 

 influence over his mind while he was a student, and served in a certain 

 sense as models in the execution of the literary part of his work. Dr. 

 Lankester remarks that from the fii'st his work showed the tendency 

 of his mind to seek for large generalizations and the development of 

 philosophical principles. " He was a natural philosopher in the widest 

 sense of the term — one who was equally familiar with the fundamental 

 doctrines of physics and with the. phenomena of the concrete sciences 

 of astronomy, geology, and biology. It was his aim, by the use of the 

 widest range of knowledge of the facts of nature, to arrive at a gen- 

 eral conception of these phenomena as the outcome of uniform and all- 

 pervading laws. His interest in the study of living things was not 

 therefore primarily that of the artist and poet so much as that of the 

 philosopher, and it is remarkable that this interest should have carried 

 him, as it did, into minute and elaborate investigations of form and 

 structure." Among his earliest contributions was a paper "On the 

 Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings." Before he was 

 twenty-five years old he had published articles on "Vegetable Physi- 

 ology " and " The Physiology of the Spinal Marrow," and a review 

 of that part of Whewell's " History of the Inductive Sciences " which 

 relates to physiology. His first important essay in the study of the 

 nervous system, the special branch of the science to which he more 

 closely devoted his attention, was a review of Noble's " Physiology of 



