continued, as it always had been, thoroughly scientific ; all the 

 papers that he published show the same care and completeness, the 

 same earnestness and width in research as his earlier anatomical 

 studies ; and he never lost the advantage of the general knowledge of 

 surgery which he gained in his duties at King's College Hospital, 

 to which, after sixteen years' service as Assistant Surgeon, he was 

 appointed Surgeon in 1856. 



Of the numerous ophthalmological papers which he published after 

 1850, and which are all included in the second volume of his collected 

 works, the most important and influential on practice were those on 

 the Treatment of Epiphora, in the * Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,' 

 vol. 34, and in the ' Ophthalmic Hospital Reports,' vol. 1, 1857 ; on 

 Conical Cornea, in the same Reports in 1859 ; and on the use of two 

 needles in Capsular Cataract, in the same Transactions, vol. 36. Other 

 valuable papers were published in the ' Lancet ' and other medical 

 journals, and in the ' Proceedings of the Ophthalmological Society ; ' 

 and of all it may justly be said, as it may of his minute anatomical 

 work, that, although later studies of the same subjects have added 

 facts and have increased the practical utility of those which he had 

 made known, yet none have detected in them errors. In practice, as 

 in minute research, he was always accurate and careful, and limited 

 his deductions to such as he could, at least, be nearly sure of. He 

 thus exercised great influence in the increase and diffusion of the 

 knowledge of safe ophthalmic surgery, and scarcely less than the in- 

 fluence of his writings was that which was due to his speedy adoption 

 of the right opinions and practices of others, especially in the use of 

 the ophthalmoscope, and of the antiseptic treatment of wounds, and 

 in the promotion of von Graefe's pathology and treatment of glau- 

 coma, and of Donders's discoveries relating to errors of refraction and 

 their remedies. 



The quantity of work that Bowman did may appear the more re- 

 markable for the fact that his health, though not unsound, was never 

 vigorous. It was, probably, for this reason that he limited his work 

 almost exclusively to study and the plain duties of his life. In 

 subjects far beyond his range of work he often seemed to enjoy think- 

 ing and wondering, but he did not give his whole mind to them ; he 

 worked for facts, and for the best use of facts in his practice or in the 

 extension of science. Similarly, he avoided all the larger official and 

 social occupations of public and professional life, and engaged only 

 in some that were nearly associated with his proper work, as in the 

 Councils of the Royal Society and of King's College, in the Royal 

 Institution, in the Ophthalmological Society, of which in 1880 he was 

 elected the first President, and in the Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Medicine by Research, of which he might be regarded as the 

 founder. In these he did all that could be deemed his duty, and he 



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