Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Turner. 231 



Epidemicfe nunc Edinburgi grassantis.'' His thesis was one of 

 the best in a year which produced an unusual number of great 

 merit. It clearly bears the impress of those quaUties which sub- 

 sequently distinguished him as an author and a teacher, — an at- 

 tachment to facts over theories, unwearied assiduity as an ob- 

 server, for his statements are founded entirely on what he him- 

 self witnessed and collected, a habit of close observation and of 

 cautious induction, together with uncommon ease, precision, arid 

 perspicuity in explaining his views. In this treatise he warmly 

 espouses the doctrine of the contagious origin of fever ; and he 

 shews that the practice of medicine was at the time, as indeed I 

 know it really was, the undivided object of his pursuits. 



It is not a little remarkable, that hitherto Dr Turner had 

 shewn no leaning tov/ards that branch of science of which he 

 was subsequently to become so ardent and successful a cultivator. 

 Of chemistry he possessed the ordinary knowledge acquired by 

 the better class of Edinburgh graduates, at a time when it was 

 not taught practically as now. But he possessed no more. He 

 had no practical acquaintance with it, no fondness for chemical 

 research. In short, none of his intimates ever dreamed that he 

 should one day become a chemist. Indeed, two years more 

 elapsed before his views pecuharly turned in that direction ; and 

 it may be safely said, that at the age of twenty-five, he had for- 

 gotten the little chemical information he had once acquired ; so 

 that his chemistry was probably much in the same case with his 

 arithmetic ten years earlier. 



It had been long intended by his friends, that he should take 

 advantage of an offer made many years before by an eminent 

 practitioner in Jamaica, of receiving him as a member of a pros- 

 perous medical copartnery in Spanish Town. But this arrange- 

 ment did not eventually suit his inclinations; the offer was trans- 

 ferred to his younger brother ; and he himself determined to try 

 his fortune as a physician in Bath, whither he accordingly re- 

 turned in the winter of 1819. 



Either, however, the slow approach of professional business, 

 or more probably, the consequent want of adequate and definite 

 exercise for his mind, now awakened to full activity, speedily 

 disgusted him with his prospects; and after going through the 

 forms of settling as a physician, he suddenly, in the summer of 



