66 DR. J. Y. SIMPSON. 



hearty noble nature. As a truth-seeking son of science, 

 he exhausted the literature of his subject before he 

 attempted a line of his own, hence his great success as 

 a truth-finder and honest historian in physiology. He 

 was an able critic of other men's opinions, and no less 

 able expositor of his own — a German in toil, a Scot in 

 caution, and ever averse to the rash and sensational 

 French school headed by Magendie. Goodsir spent 

 many an improving hour with Eeid, to whose vigorous 

 mind his own bore great affinity. 



Dr. William Henderson, the pathologist and able 

 diagnostic physician, obtained large and well-merited 

 esteem among his compeers. He and Goodsir used to 

 meet in the hospital to examine morbid products, and 

 as rising men in the school were bracketed together as 

 worthy of the professional elevation they afterwards 

 attained. Though Goodsir was looked upon as an 

 anatomist, he was exceedingly partial to pathology, 

 and his observations on the fever of Anstruther 

 enabled him to show the existence of those intestinal 

 lesions which Louis and Chomel had described, but 

 which few British observers had met with. 



Dr. James Y. Simpson, the protege and assistant- 

 lecturer of John Thomson, was in the flowing tide of fame 

 in 1840. An encyclopaedist in medical lore, of winning 

 manners and great natural abilities, and the writer of 

 numerous original essays, he raised himself to the 

 Professorship of Midwifery, and this distinction was 

 but the prelude to his greater achievements in the 

 medical art. His discovery of the anaesthetic power 



