1853 Dr.Skarpey; Lor dP aimer ston; SirD.Brewster 365 



anatomy which were so fresh and vivid as to attract an 

 increasing audience of students. At the end of four years 

 the fame of these courses brought him in 1836 an invitation 

 to fill the Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology in the 

 University of London. He accepted the call, and brought 

 new life into the teaching of his subject. He was the first 

 to introduce the microscope as an aid to physiological study 

 and exposition. He held the professorship for thirty-eight 

 years, and during that long period, when the number of his 

 students ranged from 100 to 350, he trained some of the 

 ablest physiologists of the time. His pupils had for him the 

 highest respect and esteem, and in many cases their relation 

 was almost filial in affection. His talk was varied and 

 interesting. One who knew him well has recorded that 

 " his friends remember with delight the readiness with 

 which, in the course of conversation, he could call up a 

 desiderated quotation, or supply a fact on some doubtful 

 point in history, philosophy or science, or tell humorously 

 some anecdote which was equally apposite and amusing/' * 

 No eminent foreigners appeared among the visitors this 

 year. The most notable Englishman was Viscount Palmer- 

 ston, who dined on April I4th on the invitation of Sir George 

 Staunton. He was at this time Home Secretary in the 

 administration of Lord Aberdeen, whom two years later 

 he succeeded as Prime-minister. Sir David Brewster, after 

 an interval of forty-six years, was once more a visitor at 

 the Club on April 2ist by invitation of the President. During 

 that interval most of the original scientific work of his life 

 had been accomplished. He had thrown light on many 

 branches of optics by original discoveries of his own, and 

 had shown no little ingenuity in the invention of apparatus 

 by which some of the laws of optics could be strikingly 

 illustrated, as in the case of his invention of the kaleidoscope. 

 Nor was he less remarkable for the earnestness with which 

 he strove to promote the cause of scientific knowledge 

 throughout the community. As an author of original 

 communications in the Transactions of learned societies 



1 Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. xxxi. (1881), p. xix. 



