124 FOTHERGILL'S MEDICAL FRIENDS CHAP. 



and won for himself both fame and fortune. " No man 

 knew Dublin better, and few could so readily direct a 

 professional man as to the manner by which its inhabitants 

 were to be pleased." Two papers from his pen were read 

 before the Medical Society (of Physicians) in London : 

 one on the extraction of a goose's feather from a girl's 

 throat by means of a whalebone with springs attached ; 

 and another on an aneurysmal varix of the arm following 

 venesection. 



Having received a doctor's degree in 1768, Cleghorn 

 began in 1772 to depute much of his lecturing to his 

 favourite pupil Dr. Purcell, and later to his nephews, 

 William Cleghorn and James Cleghorn, sons of a deceased 

 brother, whose large family he brought over to Dublin 

 that he might attend to their education. He continued 

 to give to crowded audiences a short course of lectures 

 upon the animal kingdom, pointing out its various tribes, 

 and how the several organs of each creature were fitted 

 to its mode of life a sign of the wisdom of the Creator. 



As age advanced, asthma and dropsy and " a weighty 

 corporation of 19! stones " led Cleghorn to decline all 

 outdoor practice, and he lived mainly at his country 

 house at Kilcarty ; where he died in 1789, honoured and 

 beloved. His chief title to fame is that he placed upon 

 a worthy basis the first School of Anatomy in Ireland. 

 Cleghorn was an original member of the Royal Irish 

 Academy, and on the foundation of the Royal Society 

 of Medicine of Paris he with his friend Fothergill were 

 nominated foreign associates. The shrewd sense and 

 justice of Cleghorn's character are illustrated in a letter 

 he wrote to his nephew Dr. Joseph Clarke, on the latter 

 seeking election to the mastership of the Rotunda Hospital. 

 " My stomach revolts against the usual mode of extract- 

 ing promises, and engaging votes, before the governors 

 can be apprized of the merits of the candidates. It is 

 founded on a supposition that all men are actuated by 

 selfish motives, regardless of the public good. If you 

 gain the election, I hope it will be by means fair and 

 honourable ; I would rather hear you had lost it, than 



