I'ro/cssor Allcn^ T/w/n>ii/it. 'J.'> 



Iiiiuiediatoly aftor his gTatluation ho hecanie the culleaguo 

 of Dr Sharpey as a lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology, in 

 Surgeons' Square, and the influence which Sharpey won over 

 him continued until the death of the latter, showing itself not 

 only in the veneration and affection with which Thomson justly 

 regarded him, but even in the unconscious imitation of some 

 of his modes of thought. In 1839 he was appointed to the 

 chair of Anatomy in Aberdeen ; in 1841, to the chair of In- 

 stitutes of Medicine in Ediuburgh ; and finally, in 1848, to 

 the chair of Anatomy in Glasgow, from which he retired 

 in 1877. 



The subject which formed the favourite study of Dr Thom- 

 son was Development. He was one of the first in this country 

 systematically and continuously to draw attention to the 

 importance of that study, and to devote himself especially to 

 its details. His inaugural thesis, published in the Edinhurrjlt 

 New Philosophical Joiinml, October 1830 and January 1831, 

 " On the development of the Vascular System in the Foetus of 

 Vertebrated Animals," gave an account of the researches of 

 Wolff, Pander, Von Ba^r, Serres, Kathke, and others, and shows 

 a mastery of the whole subject of development, so far as it had 

 been investigated at that time. Having made himself thus 

 familiar at the commencement of his career with embryological 

 literature, he continued to the last to keep himself abreast with 

 its advances, as may be seen by consulting his elaborate chapter 

 on Development in the ninth edition of Quain's Anatomy. In 

 the later years of his professoriate his attention was greatly 

 distracted from scientific subjects by the interest which he took 

 in the removal of the site of the University of Glasgow from 

 the High Street to Gilmour Hill ; and it will be admitted by 

 all who know about it that he took on himself an amount of 

 labour greater than did any one else in that arduous under- 

 taking, and that it is greatly owing to his energy and perse- 

 verance that the New University buildings are what they 

 are, and that the Western Infirmary has been built in their 

 vicinity. 



In 1876 Dr Thomson was president of the British Associa- 

 tion, and opened the proceedings of the meeting at Plymouth 

 with an elaborate address " On the Development of the Forms 

 of Annual Life," in which the facts of vegetable embryology 

 were also referred to in illustration. His argument was in 



