Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 241 
increase of confidence, and that those whose acquirements are the 
greatest meet in the progress of their investigations with most that 
leads to distrust.’ 
Dr. Young had previously given a course of lectures on the Ele- 
ments of the Medical sciences at the Middlesex Hospital, of which 
a syllabus was published in 1809. These lectures, he himself said, 
were little frequented, ‘ on account of the usual miscalculation of the 
lecturer, who gave his audience more information in a given time 
than it was in their power to follow.’ 
In 1813, he published his ‘Introduction to Medical Literature, 
including a System of Practical Nosology ;’ a work of considerable 
labor and of the highest practical utility. To this work he prefixed 
a preliminary ‘ Essay on the Study of Physic,’ partly founded on 
that of the German Professor Vogel, in which is contained his own 
conception of the qualities requisite to constitute a well educated 
physician, by which it will appear that his notion of the character 
was elevated above the ordinary standard of humanity: ‘he enumer- 
ates nearly every possible quality of which man could wish, but of 
which few could hope, the attainment.’ 
Dr. Young was a frequent contributer to the Quarterly Review, 
having been induced, at the instance of his friend Mr. e Ellis, 
to furnish articles on medical subjects. His communications, how- 
ever, soon branched into other lines, connected with the higher de- 
partments of science, and containing frequently more of original 
research than of immediate criticism. In the catalogue of his wri- 
tings, which accompanies this memoir, will be found a list of his papers 
in that journal. We shall only here mention an admirable philo- 
logical dissertation on the Structure of Language, contained in the 
review of Adelung’s Mithridates, Vol. X, October, 1813. This is 
remarkable, as it was the immediate means of leading him to the 
investigation of the lost literature of Ancient Egypt. The account 
of his discoveries on this subject is given in the words of his bi- 
ographer, because an unjust attempt has been made to wrest from 
Dr. Young the merit of having first discovered a key to the hiero- 
glyphics. : 
‘In the year 1814, Sir William Rouse Boughton had brought with 
him from Egypt some fragments of papyri, which he put into the 
hands of Dr. Young; the fragment of the Rosetta Stone having 
about this time been deposited in the British Museum, and a correct 
copy of its three inscriptions having been engraved and circulated 
