80 HIS WORK APPROVED OF. 



certain deductions for assistant, leaving a net income of 

 £120 a-year! The Surgeons' Museum, containing the 

 Barclayan collection of comparative anatomy, great num- 

 bers of highly valuable preparations by John and Charles 

 Bell, and numerous contributions of the Fellows of the 

 College, afforded a large and instructive field for obser- 

 vation. Goodsir benefited by the labours of his prede- 

 cessors in office, and notably by those of Dr. Knox, who 

 in 1825 had classified and catalogued the physiological 

 and natural history series, and aimed at a new order of 

 things, illustrating human and comparative pathology 

 — the utility of which, though not recognised at the 

 time, cannot fail to be appreciated now. 



About this time he sold his pathological prepara- 

 tions, many of which illustrated the intestinal lesions 

 which he had studied with such care at Anstruther, 

 and which had enabled him to give so full an account 

 of the fever of his home locality. 



On the 16th May 1842 the committee of curators 

 reported favourably of Goodsir 's work in the museum 

 during his year of office ; and at the same sederunt 

 the College accepted his offer to deliver a course of 

 lectures on subjects that could be illustrated by the 

 collection, in the hope that his lectures would extend 

 the usefulness of the museum and promote the in- 

 terests of the College generally. He gave a dozen 

 lectures during the summer : and it could not fail to 

 be viewed as highly complimeutary to him as a 

 curator that they were attended by professors, medi- 

 cal practitioners, and advanced students. It was 



