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OSTEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF THE EOYAL 

 COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 



The wayfarer, on journeying from the " City " towards the 

 " West end," may occasionally pass through Lincoln's Inn Fields, 

 and will find on the south side a large building, with handsome 

 portico in front, which is well known to the world, but more espe- 

 cially to those who practise the healing art, as the Royal College 

 of Surgeons of England. 



The first institution of the kind which occupied this spot, and 

 was finished about the commencement of the present century, was 

 from unforeseen causes obliged to be almost wholly removed, and 

 in 1835-6 the present far nobler structure erected, under the able 

 superintendence of Mr. (now Sir Charles) Barry. Within this 

 building, which occupies a very considerable area, are a series of 

 lofty, well-proportioned rooms, devoted to the actual business of 

 the College, which consists principally in the examination of those 

 young aspirants for the honours and emoluments of a laborious 

 and anxious profession who, with a very laudable motive, wish to 

 prove to the public that they have been so far zealous in their 

 studies as to have gained the privilege of adding to their names 

 the well-known title of M.E-.C.S.E., which will be found a suffi- 

 cient guarantee of their fitness for practice in every part of the 

 globe where surgery is regarded as a science. This portion of the 

 building contains the council-room, in which the affairs of the 

 College and of the surgical profession generally are managed by 

 twenty-four of the most enlightened and experienced members of 

 the profession. 



There are also two most valuable Libraries, one seventy feet 

 in length, and containing upwards of forty thousand volumes de- 

 voted to medical and surgical subjects, the other of smaller size, 

 and occupied principally by works on Comparative Anatomy, Zoo- 

 logy, and Botany. There are also two Theatres, in which lectures 



