xlvi 



Locke. He belonged to a literary debating Society, of which 

 Lord Campbell, then young, was also a member ; and as evidence of 

 the subjects there occupying his mind, it may be stated that he read 

 essays on the advantages to be derived from metaphysical inquiries, and 

 on the supposed modern discoveries which are to be found forestalled 

 in Pliny's ' Natural History.' This comprehensive view of the sub- 

 jects, both proper and useful in the formation of a large professional 

 mind, was never altered. In the most active period of his life he is 

 known to have examined, with care and interest, the scientific papers 

 in the early volumes of the ' Transactions ' of this Society ; and still 

 later to have increased his acquaintance with the older medical and 

 surgical writers. 



In this year and the following he dissected at Wilson's School of 

 Anatomy, worked at pharmacy in the open shop of an apothecary, 

 and did not enter St. George's Hospital till 1803. 



At the Hospital the youth immediately ripened into the man. 

 Though he would even then look wistfully at literary pursuits, and 

 kept up constant intercourse with literary men, he here first learned 

 to apply the mental instrument, which hitherto he had only whetted, 

 to the material on which for half a century it was henceforward to 

 work. He first watched his teachers as they played before him the 

 solemn and weighty game of Therapeutics, " life being the stakes ; " 

 and then, unceasingly in the wards, he studied by himself with avidity 

 the accidents and injuries to the human frame which he had pledged 

 himself henceforward to strive to alleviate or avert. He wrote full 

 notes of what he observed. They who know his terse mode of ex- 

 pression, know how clearly he thought, how exactly, how simply he 

 recorded what is essential, and how he discarded everything that is 

 irrelevant. 



Though so intent on clinical study, his well-poised mind did not 

 relax its hold on scientific work. He seized now the opportunity of 

 teaching anatomy, and continued for many years to employ his 

 powers in this manner. He attended few lectures ; there were, hap- 

 pily for him, few to attend. He read few professional books ; there 

 were not many worth study. He dissected, observed, recorded, 

 taught. He worked at anatomy for and with Sir Everard Home, not 

 only as it bore on surgical practice, but as a science, pursuing it (as 

 Hunter had done) into higher physiological questions, and into the 



