180 Notices of the Life of Professor Wilson, 



position of my cousin C. ; so tliat only ten or twelve lectures were 

 given. 



Subsequently to this Dr. Wilson went to London, and entered 

 the laboratory of University College, under the superintendence 

 of Professor Graham, now Master of the Mint. There, with Dr. 

 Lyon Playfair, Mr. James Young of Glasgow, Dr. Livingstone, the 

 African traveller, and other zealous students, he carried on his 

 chemical pursuits for a period of six months. 



He began to lecture publicly on chemistry in Edinburgh in 

 1840. About this time, however, his health began to suffer, appa- 

 rently in consequence of excessive exertion during a pedestrian 

 excursion in the Highlands with a cousin. His first course of 

 lectures was arranged when he was confined to bed, and he was 

 scarcely convalescent when he commenced the session of Novem- 

 ber, 1840. His health continued broken after this. An attack 

 of rheumatism was followed by disease of the ankle-joint, which 

 ultimately called for amputation. This was performed in January 

 1843, by his friend, and afterwards his colleague, Professor Syme. 

 Amputation seemed to offer the only hope of relief, and Mr. Syme 

 proposed disarticulation. Accordingly, he performed this oper- 

 ation ; and as the articulating surfaces of the joint were everywhere 

 divested of cartilage, rough and carious, instead of removing the 

 malleolar projections separately, he exposed the bone suflBciently 

 to saw off both together, with a thin lamina of the tibia connect- 

 ing them. This was the first instance in which Professor Syme 

 amputated through the ankle-joint for disease of the joint. It is 

 therefore interesting in the annals of surgery. The case proceeded 

 favourably. The feelings which Dr. Wilson experienced previous 

 to the operation, and during its performance, are graphically por- 

 trayed by him in a letter on " the Anaesthetics of Surgery," which 

 he addressed to Professor Simpson, and which is published in 

 Simpson's Obstetric Works, edited by Drs. Priestley and Storrer, 

 Vol. H., p. '796. He contrasts the condition of patients in his day, 

 before the use of chloroform, with their state at the present 

 time : — 



" Several years ago," he says, " I was required to prepare, on 

 very short warning, for the loss of a limb by amputation. A 

 painful disease, which for a time had seemed likely to yield to the 

 remedies employed, suddenly became greatly aggravated, and I 



