1 



speak of the benefit he had derived from the society of the great 

 statesmen, literary men, artists, and other eminent persons whom he 

 there met. 



In the year 1813 he delivered the Croonian Lecture on the effect 

 of the Nerves on the Heart and on the involuntary Muscles. With 

 characteristic modesty and his usual thoroughness of purpose, he 

 requested that, as the subject required further inquiry, it might not 

 be printed. His mind was still bent on the significance of the 

 higher vital phenomena in animals ; for in the following year (1814) 

 another paper was printed in our Transactions, (< On the Influence of 

 the Nerves of the Eighth Pair on the Secretions of the Stomach." 



In 1816 he instituted experiments on animals to determine the 

 effect of the bile on chylification. His conclusion, that it is essential 

 to that process, has been since disputed ; but it is still probable 

 that the earlier investigator was as near to the truth as his critics. 

 He afterwards lectured on Comparative Anatomy for four years at 

 the College of Surgeons, from 1819 to 1823, bringing to bear the 

 stores of knowledge he had previously acquired when working with 

 Mr. Clift and Sir Everard Home. 



With these last lectures his active physiological studies must be 

 considered to have closed. But so trained was he in scientific pur- 

 suits, that his eager interest in anatomical and physiological questions, 

 and in the philosophy of his art, never left him. 



Henceforward not only his duties at St. George's Hospital, and to 

 private patients, but also his inclination led him to devote his whole 

 powers of investigation to those alterations in the living body which 

 constitute disease. The unsatisfactory state of surgical knowledge, 

 and therefore of practice, in regard to affections of the joints, attracted 

 his attention, and he at once hit on a principle which was a guiding 

 maxim to him in after life. Finding how little could be made out 

 of a disease by dissection of the parts where organic alteration was 

 far advanced, he used to examine the joints of those who had died 

 of other diseases, in order to find the first traces of future injury. 

 At the end of two years' assiduous inquiry, for which he had great 

 opportunities, he felt at liberty to communicate to the Medico- 

 Chirurgical Society some observations on the question*. To these 

 he added in the following year f. These papers form the basis of 

 * Med. Chir. Trans, vtfl. iv. f Ibid. vol. v. 



