100 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



periment of whose success you are doubtful.' I bowed respect- 

 fully my assent, adding at the same time that I was happy to find 

 that I had begun right, for I had hitherto endeavored to adopt 

 the very course which he had presented, and which I should en- 

 deavor still to follow. I thought I perceived that something in 

 his manner indicated that he would have been quite as well 

 pleased if I had not in some measure anticipated his experience. 

 He proved himself a model professor, and fully entitled to act as 

 a mentor." 



In the expectation that a medical school would be established 

 in New Haven, Silliman attended anatomical lectures in Phila- 

 delphia, and he did likewise in Edinburgh. Dr. James Gregory 

 was then chief of the Edinburgh Medical School, the leading 

 consultant in medicine, and, like his colleague Hope, an admirable 

 lecturer. To his courses Silliman was naturally attracted. "His 

 lectures," says his pupil, "were very informal, although not imme- 

 thodical; if they were written out, he made no use of notes, but 

 began without exordium, and poured out the rich treasures of his 

 ardent mind with such crowding rapidity of diction that it was not 

 always easy to apprehend fully his thoughts, because we could 

 not distinctly hear all his words. He had many historical and per- 

 sonal anecdotes, some of which have remained with me during the 

 fifty- two years that have passed since I heard them." 



Dr. John Murray, a private lecturer, not connected with the 

 University, gave instruction to a company of thirty-five or forty 

 persons in his own house, and in this less formal and more famil- 

 iar mode of instruction, Silliman found a valuable accessory to the 

 lectures of Dr. Hope. "Both united," he says, "gave a finish and 

 completeness that was all I could desire to enable me to resume 

 my course of instruction at home." 



Edinburgh was then the seat of a great scientific battle. Pro- 

 fessor Robert Jameson had recently returned from Freiberg where 

 he was fully imbued with the geological tenets of Werner respect- 

 ing the agency of water in the phenomena of Geology. Dr. 

 Murray was a zealous advocate of these Wernerian theories. Dr. 

 Hope, on the other hand, defended what was called the philosophy 

 of fire, and the extended researches of Dr. Hutton. The discus- 



