PROFESSIONAL LIFE OF THE AUTHOU. 



i WAS educated with my maternal grandfather, a dignitary of 

 the cathedral of St. David's ; the bishop of the diocess becoming 

 my godfather, with an understanding that I was to be brought' 

 up to the church, under his auspices. Unfortunately, the prin- 

 ciples of my father, as a dissenting divine, frustrated these pros- 

 pects; and it was at length agreed between the two parents, 

 that I should be consigned to a less scholastic but more la* 

 borious profession, the ars mendendi, which first aberration laid 

 the foundation of all the subsequent ones ; for of all professions 

 that of a parish priest offers the fewest temptations to deviate 

 from a direct course. In consequence of this agreement, I was, 

 at the age of fourteen, placed with an eminent practitioner in 

 Buckinghamshire ; and at twenty-one was entered a pupil at the 

 Borough Hospitals, under the direct guidance of the ingenious 

 Dr. Haighton, where I remained nearly three years, the last of 

 which was passed under the roof of this friend of my family; 

 and to whom, during my stay, it was my study to discharge 

 some of my obligations, by actively employing myself in assist- 

 ing him in his physiological experiments, and in myself making 

 many of those particular dissections, and the whole of the draw- 

 ings designated to illustrate the re-union of divided nerves, and 

 the nature of the interposed substance, that gained him the prize 

 medal of the Royal Institution ; and which further led to the 

 discovery of the division of the facial nerves as a cure for tic 

 doloureujt;. About this time the public attention became en- 

 gaged in forming a national college for the systematic study of 

 brute medicine. One professor (M. St. Bel) had been already 

 engaged ; and there was yet wanting an assistant teacher of 



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