LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. xlvii 



had been gradually failing, and he died on the 4th of September 

 last, after a short illness, in the 68th year of his age. 



Thomas Salter, Esq., was the descendant of a highly respectable 

 Quaker-family in Somersetshire, and became at an early age the 

 pupil of the late Thomas Bell, Esq. of Poole, the father of our 

 excellent President. In 1809 he entered at St. Thomas's Hos- 

 pital, and in 1810 he was admitted a Member of the Eoyal College 

 of Surgeons, the Council of which, on the grant of their new 

 Charter in 1844, conferred on him the title of Fellow. On his 

 return to Poole, after the completion of his medical studies in 

 London, he was admitted into partnership by Mr. Bell, whose 

 only daughter he married. Prom that time, until the day of his 

 death, he continued to practise his profession in Poole, where he 

 acquired a high degree of influence, not only by the success of his 

 medical practice, but also by his social qualities, the cheerfulness 

 of his disposition, and the atmosphere of pleasant comfort which 

 his presence diffused even in the chamber of sickness and of suf- 

 fering. Through the whole of this lengthened period he prose- 

 cuted his profession in all its scientific bearings, and constantly 

 kept pace with advancing discovery, reading all the most import- 

 ant medical works as they appeared, and preparing with his 

 own hands anatomical and pathological specimens. The medical 

 library which he has left behind him is one of the largest, and his 

 medical museum by far the most important in the county of 

 Dorset. He also contributed many valuable Papers to medical 

 literature, most of which were published in the Transactions of 

 the different medical societies ; and educated more than twenty 

 pupils, many of whom, including his three surviving sons, hold a 

 distinguished position in the ranks of the profession : two of his 

 sons are Fellows of our Society. His youngest son, Mr. Morgan 

 Salter, unhappily volunteered to take the medical charge of H. M.S. 

 Prince, and perished from the wreck of that ill-fated ship in the 

 great storm at Balaklava. Mr. Salter's death, which was no doubt 

 hastened by this sad event, from the shock of which he never 

 recovered, took place suddenly. On his way to visit some sick 

 poor, on the night of the 20th of February, the extreme coldness 

 of the air appears partially to have arrested his circidation, which 

 his heart was apparently too feeble to restore. He sought refuge 

 in the house of a friend, where he died before any assistance could 

 arrive, from no actual disease, but from sudden and complete 

 prostration of the system. In early life he devoted his few leisure 

 hours to the study of geology, botany and chemistry, and he has 



