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Sir Richard Quain's literary work and his researches into various 

 departments of medical science were, if not numerous, very important. 

 As a member of the Royal Commission appointed in 1865 to con- 

 sider the question of rinderpest or cattle plague, in which he was 

 associated with Lord Spencer, Lord Cranborne (now Marquess of 

 Salisbury), Lord Sherbrook, Dr. Lyon (now Lord) Playfair, Dr. 

 Edmund Parkes, and Dr. Bence Jones, he took a prominent part, 

 and was an earnest advocate of the stamping- out measures recom- 

 mended by the Commission, which, though strongly opposed at the 

 time, subsequent events have proved to have had the result of saving 

 large sums of money to the nation. He was a frequent contributor 

 to tlie * Saturday Review,' to the ' Lancet,' and other medical 

 journals ; whilst his treatise on " Fatty Degeneration of the Heart " 

 in the ' Transactions of the Medical and Chirurgical Society ' for 

 1850, expanded into a more elaborate article in his ' Dictionary of 

 Medicine ' some years later. His reports, in conjunction with the 

 staff of the Brompton Hospital, compiled for several years, of the 

 cases treated there ; some valuable contributions to the * Lancet ' of 

 1845 on Bright's disease, and to the ' Edinburgh Monthly Journal of 

 Medicine' on " Injuries of the Valves of the Heart," together with 

 his Lumleian Lectures given before the College of Physicians in 1872 

 on " Diseases of the Muscular Walls of the Heart " were, and are 

 still, regarded as authoritative writings. 



But the great work with which Quain's name will ever be asso- 

 ciated is that of the 'Dictionary of Medicine,' on which the years 

 between 1875 and 1882 were spent, and which reappeared in a second 

 edition in 1894, enlarged and brought up to the knowledge of the 

 present time. For this cyclopedia of medical science he had care- 

 fully selected the contributors from the most eminent members of 

 the medical profession, whose communications were all revised and, 

 in some cases, modified by himself. His own contributions, espe- 

 cially those on " Fatty Degeneration of the Heart," " Angina 

 Pectoris," " Aneurism of the Heart," " Diseases of the Bronchial 

 Glands and General Remarks on Disease " are not the least valuable. 

 The work, in short, having filled a want long felt by the profession, 

 gained their entire confidence. To his able coadjutors, Dr. Frederick 

 Roberts, Dr. Mitchell Bruce, and Mr. John Harold he gave due 

 credit, and to their untiring devotion to the work its success is in 

 great part as he himself would have acknowledged to be attri- 

 buted. 



Not the least interesting of Quain's contributions to medical litera- 

 ture was his Harveian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of 

 Physicians in 1885, in which he dealt eloquently with the healing art 

 in its historic and prophetic aspects. 



In 1871 Dr. Quain was, for his eminence as a physician and for 



