SIR ERASMUS WILSON CHAIR OF PATHOLOGY xxi. 



There were few in the medical profession of his day 

 whose attainments presented such a varied aspect, and whose 

 career was marked by such unusual success. Commencing life 

 as an anatomist, Sir Erasmus did much, by writing and lecturing, 

 to advance its claims, and to make its teaching easy. The 

 Dissector s Manual, the Vade Mecum, and Anatomical Plates 

 are evidence enough of the energy he developed in the study 

 of the subject. In course of time, however, the founder of 

 our Chair of Pathology renounced his anatomical pursuits to 

 engage in the specialty — that of Dermatology — with which his 

 name, medically, is chiefly associated, and in which he gained 

 for himself a world-wide reputation. The works which he 

 published on this subject, such as his Diseases of the Skin, 

 his On the Management of the Skin as a means of promoting 

 and preserving Health, his Atlas of Portraits of Diseases of 

 the Skin, and many others, are well worthy to be, as they 

 are, classical models for all time. In the year 1869, he founded 

 the Chair and established the Museum of Dermatology in the 

 London College of Surgeons, and was appointed its first 

 Professor. 



He was admitted a member of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons of England in the year 1831, of which College he 

 subsequently became an Honorary Fellow and ultimately 

 President. In the year 1844, he was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, and in that of 1881, the University of Aberdeen 

 conferred on him its honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. 



One of the subjects by which Sir Erasmus Wilson was best 

 known, popularly, was that of Egyptian Archaeology. We need 

 hardly remind the reader of the works he published in this 

 domain, and of the gift he conferred upon the nation by the 

 transference of one of the Alexandrian obelisks to the banks 

 of the Thames. He amassed an enormous fortune, partly from 

 the practice of his profession, partly from judicious investment, 



