Charing Cross Hospital 9 



At Charing Cross the dissecting-room was in a cellar 

 under the hospital, and subjects like chemistry, botany, 

 physiology, and so forth were crowded into incon- 

 venient side rooms. The teachers were not specialists, 

 devoting their whole attention to particular branches 

 of science, but were doctors engaged in practice, who, 

 in addition to their private duties and their work at the 

 hospital, each undertook to lecture upon a special 

 scientific subject. Huxley came specially under the 

 influence of Mr. Wharton Jones, who had begun to 

 teach physiology at the hospital a j'ear before. Mr. 

 Jones throughout his life was engaged in professional 

 work, his specialt}' being ophthalmic surgery, but he 

 was a devoted student of anatomy and physiology, and 

 made several classical contributions to scientific know- 

 ledge, his best-known discoveries relating to Mood cor- 

 puscles and to the nature of the mammalian egg-cell. 

 But perhaps his greatest claim to fame is that it was he 

 who first imbued Huxley with a love for anatomical 

 science and with a knowledge of the methods of inves- 

 tigation. At the end of his first session, in 1843, 

 Huxley received the first prize in the senior physiol- 

 ogy class, while his brother got a ' ' good conduct ' ' 

 prize. Of Wharton Jones Huxley writes : 



"The extent and precision of his knowledge impressed me 

 greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing 

 was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so 

 much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I 

 worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely 

 kind and helpful to the youngster who, I am afraid, took up 

 more of his time than he had any right to do. It was he who 

 suggested the publication of my first scientific paper — a very 

 little one — in the IMedical Gazette of 1845, and most kindly 

 corrected the literary faults which abounded in it short as it 



