Manchester Meuioirs, Vol. Ivii. (1913), 7V(7. 19. 7 



Twice within the four or five last j-ears I have had 

 attacks of haemoptysis, slight it is true, but still 

 sufficient to render any situation ineligible in which 

 public speaking would be a necessary duty. That I 

 may not, therefore, be the means of interfering with 

 the views of any other candidate, I lose no time in 

 declining your very kind and ^flattermg suggestion 

 and in assuring you and my other friends who have 

 concurred in it that I am deeply sensible of the 

 esteem by which it has been prompted. 



Now that the office is vacant, would it not be 

 advisable to require that the future holder of it should 

 not practise medicine? All the sound and formidable 

 reasoning of Professor Playfair" in the controversy 

 respecting the mathematical chair of Edinburgh seems 

 to me to apply with equal weight to a chemical 

 lectureship. In the courses of Lectures which I 

 formerly gave, I found employment for my whole 

 time as long as they lasted, and though much may 

 no doubt be done to abridge the labour by arrange- 

 ments similar to those so successfully practised by 

 Dr. Hope,'' yet I cannot conceive even moderately 

 extensive medical practice to be otherwise than 

 incompatible with daily lectures on any experimental 

 science, and with that devotion of mind and ardent 

 enthusiasm which a public teacher ought to feel and 

 to kindle to a considerable degree in his hearers. 

 Believe, etc., etc., 



AV. Henry. 

 To Dr. Bown, 



Miller Street, 



Glasgow. 



2 John Playfair (1748-1819), Mathematician. Joint Professor of Mathe- 

 matics at Edinburgh 17S5-1805 ; became in 1805 Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy. Grandfather of the famous chemist, Sir Lyon Playfair. 



3 Thomas Charles Hope (1766-1844), Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow 

 and Edinburgh. 



