13 



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 Compara- 

 tive 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 

 Comparative 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, Valenciennes, Dumeril, and Milne-Edwards on Zool- 

 ogy and Comparative 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 Belgium, 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 profes- 

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

 Anatomy and Physiology in the medical department of 

 Hampden-Sidney College, established at Richmond, Vir- 

 ginia. One advantage of this position was that it did not 

 interrupt his residence in Boston except for the winter and 



