380 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



It may be interesting to know, that, to eke out his subsistence, 

 he became at this time a member of the Boston Fire Depart- 

 ment, under an appointment of Samuel A. Eliot, Mayor, 

 dated September 1, 1838. He was assigned to Engine No. 

 18. The rule was that the first-comer to the engine-house 

 should bear the lantern, and be absolved from other work. 

 Wyman lived near by, and his promptitude generally saved 

 him from all severer labor than that of enlightening his 

 company. 



The turning-point in his life, i. e., an opportunity which he 

 could seize of devoting it to science, came when Mr. John A. 

 Lowell offered him the curatorship of the Lowell Institute, 

 just brought into operation, and a course of lectures in it. 

 He delivered his course of twelve lectures upon comparative 

 anatomy and physiology in the winter of 1840-41 ; and with 

 the money earned by this first essay in instructing others, he 

 went to Europe to seek further instruction for himself. He 

 reached Paris in May, 1841, and gave his time at once to 

 human anatomy at the School of Medicine, and compara- 

 tive anatomy and natural history at the Garden of Plants, 

 attending the lectures of Flourens, Majendie, and Longet on 

 physiology, and of De Blainville, Isidore St. Hilaire, Valen- 

 ciennes, Dumeril, and Milne-Edwards on zoology and com- 

 parative anatomy. In the summer, when the lectures were 

 over, he made a pedestrian journey along the banks of the 

 Loire, and another along the Rhine, returning through Bel- 

 gium, and by steamer to London. There, while engaged in 

 the study of the Hunterian collections at the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, he received information of the alarming illness of 

 his father ; he immediately turned his face homeward, but on 

 reaching Halifax he learned that his father was no more. 



He resumed his residence in Boston, and devoted himself 

 mainly to scientific work, under circumstances of no small 

 discouragement. But in 1843 the means of a modest pro- 

 fessional livelihood came to him in the offer of the chair of 

 anatomy and physiology in the medical department of Hamp- 

 den-Sidney College, established at Richmond, Virginia. One 

 advantage of this position was that it did not interrupt his 



