PART V 

 ADDRESSES 



AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 



(ON THE CAUSATION OF PUTREFACTION AND FERMENTATION)' 



Delivered in the University of Edinburgh, November 8, 1869. 

 [Edinburgh, 1869 (Pamphlet).] 



Gentlemen. — I stand before you affected with very mingled feelings. 

 On the one hand, I cannot but feel proud to have been called to occupy a 

 Chair which, without disparagement to others, must be allowed to have been, 

 during the last thirty-six years, the one most influential for good in this the 

 most important medical school in the British dominions. But the exultation 

 which I might otherwise naturally feel is heavily dashed by the thought that 

 the circumstance which led to my promotion was the retirement of the man 

 to whom the lustre of the Edinburgh Chair of Clinical Surgery has been from 

 first to last entirely due. I am well aware that he has made the place, not 

 the place him. And though in his presence I must not say all that I other- 

 wise should, I cannot refrain from expressing my conviction that, whether 

 regarded as a scientific and practical surgeon, or as a teacher of those principles 

 which he has done more than any other man in this century to establish, he 

 has been without a rival in the world. Hence, in addition to the grief which 

 I feel in common with you all at the cause of his resigning the Chair which 

 he had so long adorned, I am oppressed with a humbling sense of my own 

 insufficiency ; of my weakness, compared with his giant strength of mind 

 and purpose ; of my utter inability to fill his i)lace. I can only strive, by the 

 blessing of (lod, to do my best among 3'ou, relying, as I know I may, upon \-our 

 generous sympathy. At the same time, we may all rejoice that our old master 

 is still among us, to cheer us by his presence and aid us b\' his counsel ; and 

 it is a source of great satisfaction to myself that, as I have the privilege of 

 free access to his inexhaustible store of wisdom and experience, he will, in some 

 sense, through me be still your teacher. 



' This lecture was not ori^'inalK- intended for publication, anil was for the niosi part deUvered 

 extempore. 



