Sir William Jenner. 29 



highest titular honours short of a peerage, to which a professional man 

 could aspire. 



Sir William Jenner very early acquired the absolute confidence of 

 the members of his own profession, and the profound regard of all who 

 came in contact with him. He had laid a solid foundation in consult- 

 ing practice before his Court appointment brought him conspicuously 

 before the general public, and he quickly attained one of the largest 

 consulting practices achieved by any .physician of the century. In 

 1862 he was appointed Professor of Medicine in University College, a 

 post which the exigencies of private work compelled him to relinquish 

 in 1867. His lectures were highly prized by his students for their 

 unique practical quality, the outcome of his vast experience and close 

 habitual observation. But it was in his bedside teaching and in the 

 post mortem room that these characteristics found their most brilliant 

 expression. His thoroughness and precision of observation, lucid 

 exposition, and clear logical reasoning, impressed indelibly the facts of 

 disease and the rationale of its treatment on the mind of the hearer, 

 and elicited the admiration of an occasional chance auditor from out- 

 side the profession. He resigned his connection with the Fever 

 Hospital on receiving his Court appointment, and with the Hospital 

 for Sick Children about the same time, but continued his work at 

 University College Hospital until 1878. In 1881 he was elected 

 President of the College of Physicians, the highest post in the medical 

 profession, and was re-elected annually for six years. During his term 

 of office he took a leading part in several important proceedings, espe- 

 cially in the amalgamation of the examinations of the College with 

 those of the College of Surgeons to confer the "Conjoint Diploma." 

 It was under his influence that the movement for a "Teaching Uni- 

 versity " first took practical shape in proposals that were not destined 

 to survive, but which largely excited the more enduring movement. He 

 felt strongly the injustice to London students, and practical disadvant- 

 age, entailed by their inability to obtain an M.D. degree for knowledge 

 and practical training equal or superior to that which secures it in the 

 provinces and sister kingdoms, and urged strongly that a beginning 

 should be made by the conjoined Colleges, but the opposition of the 

 graduates of existing Universities was fatal to the proposal. 



Sir William Jenner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1864, and few physicians have more distinctly justified the honour, 

 both by the scientific character of their medical work, or by the pro- 

 fessional eminence to which they have attained. He was a staunch 

 friend, somewhat ready to take personal offence, but kind, warm- 

 hearted, and just, never permitting personal feeling to interfere with 

 his sense of what was right to the individual, or desirable for others. 



W. R. G. 



