132 HIS EFFORTS TO OBTAIN 



education. In the spring of 1843, addressing his bro- 

 ther Harry, then pushing forward in science beyond 

 most persons of his age, he admonishes him not to 

 overlook practice ; for though one man only, as far as 

 he knew (John Hunter), ever combined science and 

 practice, it was to be done by self-command and early 

 rising — the latter being a sine qua non to eminence 

 in scientific medicine. He pointed to Dr. Abercrombie 

 of Edinburgh — " a perfect clock, as rich as a Jew, and 

 a great physician besides." During this year he talked 

 of a house in the New Town for practice purely ; and 

 in 1847, when he took up his residence in George 

 Square, he did not hide his aspirations to become a 

 consulting surgeon. He viewed practice in its broadest 

 relations as a means of research, and of greater or more 

 immediate usefulness as a co-operator with science, 

 joining with it a complete circle of medical training 

 which it behoved a teacher in high position like him- 

 self to expound and inculcate. He believed that ana- 

 tomy, physiology, and pathology could never be ad- 

 vanced in a proper way without the daily consideration 

 and treatment of disease. Eef erring to personal consi- 

 derations in 1843, he thought that the Goodsir family 

 of doctors, having been eighty years in the east of Fife, 

 should be transplanted, and that his brothers Harry 

 and Archie should settle down with himself in Edin- 

 burgh, where they would form a " formidable trio." 



After these hopes of family centralisation had 

 vanished, Goodsir was no less desirous for his favourite 

 conjunction — the teaching of science illustrated by 



