WILLIAM BENJAMIN CARPENTER, the eminent English physiologist, was 

 born in the early part of this century, and graduated as doctor of medicine 

 in Edinburgh in 1839. He commenced practice in Bristol, but has been 

 chiefly occupied as a lecturer and author. His most important works are 

 the "Principles of General and Comparative Physiology" (1839), the 

 " Principles of Human Physiology" (1846), which reached a fifth edition in 

 1855, and " The Microscope, its Revelations and Uses" (1856). He is the 

 author of various minor, but valuable works, and of many elaborate papers 

 in the cyclopedias and scientific periodicals. For many years he was editor 

 of the " British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review." He was elected 

 a member of the Royal Society in 1844, and is now Professor of Medical 

 Jurisprudence in University College, London ; Lecturer on General Anatomy 

 and Physiology at the London Hospital and School of Medicine, and Ex- 

 aminer in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in the University of Lon- 

 don. In 1850 he published an able paper hi the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society on the " Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces," and 

 has published upon the same general subject, the essays which close this vol- 

 ume, in the new Quarterly Journal of Science for the present year. Dr. Car- 

 penter is an able and original thinker, as well as a voluminous writer, and has 

 made many valuable contributions to the progress of physiological science. 



