240 Memoir of the Life of “Dr. Thomas Young. 
enjoyed, he waived, in some degree, the advantage which is given by 
a great name towards the pursuit of even professional success.’ 
In 1807, Dr. Young published his ‘ Course of Lectures on Natural 
Philosophy and the Mechanic Arts,’ in two volumes, 4to; a work 
of first-rate merit, which cost him nearly five years’ labor to perfect. 
The mass of references contained in the second volume, to those 
works which the student engaged in minute inquiries in any branch 
may consult with advaniage, affords evidence of the extensive reading 
and industry of this eminent philosopher. Owing to the failure of 
the booksellers engaged in the publication of Dr. Young’s Lectures, 
the immediate sale of the work was so greatly injured that it did not 
repay the expenses of the publication. Indeed, for some years, its 
great merits were not so extensively appreciated in England as on 
the Continent: but at length justice has been done to it in the 
country which gave it birth,—it is a mine to which every one engaged 
in scientific pursuits must have recourse with advantage, and it is no 
less true that ‘it contains the original hints of more things since 
claimed as discoveries, than can perhaps be found in a single pro- 
duction of any known author.’ ‘One of the men most distinguished 
for science in Europe has been known to say, that if his library were 
on fire, and he could save only one book from the conflagration, it 
should be the Lectures‘of Dr. Young.’ 
In 1810, Dr. Young was appointed Physician to St. George’s 
Hospital; but his private practice, though respectable, was never 
extensive. His biographer has, we think, pointed out the true cause 
with great discrimination: ‘In his profession, his published labors 
would prove him to have been of the most learned of scientific phy- 
sicians, and his judgment and acuteness were equally great; but in 
the practice of medicine he was not one of those who were likely to 
win the most extended occupation among the multitude. He was 
averse to some of the ordinary methods by which it is acquired. He 
never affected an assurance which he did not feel, and had, perhaps, 
rather a tendency to fear the injurious effects which might eventually 
result from the application of powerful remedies, than to any over- 
weeéning confidence in their immediate efficacy. His treatises bear 
the same impress. ‘That on consumption is a most striking instance 
of his assiduity in collecting all recorded facts, and his abstinence 
from drawing inferences from isolated cases, or putting forth that 
which he did not feel was established with certainty. Possibly he 
herein was an example, that increase of knowledge does not tend to 
