22 Roijal Irish Acadermj. 



pen, were publislied his Lectures on Fever, in wLicli lie gave the 

 results of his vast experience in the observation and treatment of that 

 disease — results which can never lose their value, though, in the opinion 

 of many physicians, he did not suificiently distinguish the several 

 morbid affections comprehended under the general name of Pever. 



"We possess, besides his strictly medical writings, a valuable series- 

 of Addresses which he delivered from time to time, chiefly in the 

 Theatre of the Meath Hospital or in the University of Dublin, in 

 which, in the year 1845, he succeeded his father as Eegius Professor 

 of Physic. These are to an unprofessional reader the best evidence of 

 his varied powers, and a most interesting record of his general views. 

 He exhibits in them the attitude which all through his life he main- 

 tained in relation to the philosophy of medicine. " We have not yet," 

 he said, '' a Theory of Medicine. But at the appointed time, when the 

 required amount of facts have been faithfully observed and recorded, 

 they will, by one of the great properties of truth, crystallize spon- 

 taneously into a system and a law." He was, accordingly, in medical 

 doctrine what he described Grraves as having been — an Eclectic. "Whilst 

 essentially following the Hippocratic tradition, and therefore attaching 

 primary importance to the study of symptoms in the living body, and 

 denying the connexion of all disease with organic lesion, he admitted the 

 vast advantage which had arisen from the researches of the pathologi- 

 cal anatomists. He welcomed all the additions contributed by modern 

 science to the means of diagnosis, proclaiming — as we have seen — at 

 the very outset of his career the importance of stethoscopy, and in one 

 of his latest discourses enumerating the aids to be derived from optics, 

 from new applications of acoustics, and from physical phenomena 

 generally, in the study of morbid conditions. 



But in these Addresses he has also dealt with questions of a different 

 kind, and of no less importance to the public; and these subjects sa 

 largely occupied his mind, and his views respecting them were so often 

 put forward in his public and private discoui'se, that they cannot be 

 passed over in a notice like the present. Pilled with a sense of the great- 

 ness of his noble profession, he insisted again and again on the means 

 which he judged best fitted to elevate it in general estimation and in 

 social position. He is never tired of impressiag on his hearers the neces- 

 sity of a sound and large general culture as the basis of professional in- 

 struction. "Without such culture, he insisted, no special training could 



