64 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



with the endeavour to expound them with reiterated 

 emphasis. 



Side by side with the treatise on " Human Physiology " 

 stood the " Principles of General and Comparative Physi- 

 ology," of which the third edition appeared in 1851,* and 

 the fourth in 1854. Of the place which these books filled 

 in the medical and scientific education of the time, and the 

 author's share in the direction of modern thought through 

 them, a brief estimate is offered in the words of those most 

 qualified to speak. Dr. Carpenter used himself in earlier 

 days to say that the greatest honour he had ever received 

 was to be told by Von Baer that he had read one of his 

 Physiologies on the shores of the Caspian. 



I believe (writes Sir James Paget), that among all the events 

 which have had great influence on the teaching of physiology 

 in our medical schools, none has been more important than 

 the institution of separate courses of physiological lectures. 

 The whole subject, so far as it was taught at all, used to be 

 included in the course on anatomy, and was regarded as far 

 less important than the applications of anatomy in the practice 

 of surgery. The change began between forty and fifty years 

 ago, and among many things proving its necessity, none, I think, 

 had more influence than the publication of Dr. Carpenter's two 

 principal works in 1839 and 1842. Their influence coincided 

 with those exercised by Dr. Sharpey's teaching and the transla- 

 tion of Midler's " Physiologie des Menschen," and with the con- 

 stantly increasing interest in physiology which was sdrred by 

 the teachings of Owen, Liebig, and Goodsir, by Dr. Marshall 

 Hall's works on the reflex functions of the spinal cord, and by 

 Kiernan's essay on the minute structure of the liver, and 

 Bowman's on that of the kidney. 



It is impossible to measure the influence of each of these ; 

 but their number and importance are enough to prove that the 



* The labour involved in the production of such books may be in part 

 estimated from the fact that out of the loSo pages of which the new volume 

 consisted, only 15 1 belonged to the previous edition. The general plan, how- 

 ever, remained the same. 



