LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XXIX 



St., Cavendish Square, where the now Dr. Rolleston had his 

 name on a brass-plate on the door. But the prospect of a 

 London physician's life was to change very soon to a different 

 view. 



Before the end of 1857, the death of Dr. Ogle, Physician to 

 the Radcliffe Infirma^ at Oxford, brought Rolleston back there, 

 armed with a pamphlet full of praises from medical authorities. 

 The laudatory flavour of testimonials makes them, when their 

 occasion is past, as hard reading as epitaphs, but there is a 

 sentence in one of these from Dr. Jeune, which must be quoted 

 as recording a notable moment in Rolleston's earlier Oxford 

 career : — ' That on leaving Oxford, to follow his medical career 

 in London, he took with him his vigorous application and quick 

 perception, was proved by his Examination for the Degree of 

 Bachelor of Medicine ; at the close of it, the three Examiners, all 

 men of celebrity, rose and publicly thanked him in my presence 

 for the Examination which he had passed— an unprecedented 

 distinction.' It is not surprising that Rolleston's friend who 

 was his one serious competitor retired, leaving the course free for 

 him. The same year Dr. (now Sir Henry W.) Acland (one of the 

 three examiners above mentioned) was made Regius Professor of 

 Medicine, vacating the Lee's Readership in Anatomy at Christ 

 Church, whereupon the Dean and Chapter appointed Dr. Rolleston 

 his successor. This office is one of historical interest, as the 

 germ out of which the Science School of Oxford has been 

 largely developed. In 1 j6$, Dr. Matthew Lee founded at Christ 

 Church a Museum of Anatomy, in the building where now 

 is the Chemical Laboratory. But it was not a flourishing 

 foundation when Dr. Acland came back to Oxford to be 

 installed as Reader, and found himself master of the gloomy 

 musty room where a human skeleton hanging by the top of 

 its head to an old brown cord was conspicuous at once as 

 apparatus and ornament. Scarcely any one ever came into this 

 old-world place to inspect the anatomical preparations which 

 embodied the then most advanced Physiology. Dreary as was 

 the outlook of Natural Science in those days, the new period 



