XXV 



the only other commercial assayers ii) London, though his rivals, used to 

 send him all compounds or minerals of a difficult and complicated nature 

 to report upon for them. 



Accomplished as he was in his department, and singularly successful in 

 perfecting whatever he undertook, his opinion was always sought for with 

 earnestness and received with confidence. Few men have worked more 

 perseveringly and effectively for the improvement of their profession. 



Mr. Johnson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 30, 

 1846. 



The life of Sir William Lawrence, Bart., closed on the 5th of last 

 July. He had nearly completed his 84th year. Not more than two years 

 before his death he resigned his active duties at St. Bartholomew's Hos- 

 pital, but even then he did not cease from work, and was attacked with 

 apoplexy just previous to an examination at the College of Surgeons. 



Lawrence, the son of a surgeon, was born on the 16th of July, 1783, at 

 Cirencester, in Gloucestershire. After receiving a preliminary education 

 at a private school, in his seventeenth year he came to London, and was 

 apprenticed to Abernethy, in whose house he resided for five years. But 

 at the expiration of three years, being then only twenty, he v/as appointed 

 Demonstrator of Anatomy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He discharged 

 the duties of this ofiice with remarkable ability for twelve years. When 

 twenty-two, he received the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 Eight years afterwards he was appointed Assistant-surgeon to St. Bartho- 

 lomew's Hospital, and eleven years later still he became one of the principal 

 surgeons. He held this office for more than forty years, and when he 

 retired in 1865, he was unanimously elected by the Governors to the com- 

 plimentary office of Consulting Surgeon. Thus from first to last he was 

 connected with the hospital for sixty-eight years. 



It is well known that at the early period of his life he worked very hard 

 without interruption, as indeed he did almost to the last. Besides dis- 

 charging his public duties with rare efficiency, he read very much and 

 wrote too. At eighteen years of age he published an anonymous transla- 

 tion of a Latin work — Description of the arteries of the human body, by 

 Dr. Ad. Murray, Professor at the University of Upsal. In his twenty- 

 sixth year he obtained the Jacksonian Prize for an essay on Hernia. This 

 was the foundation of his important book on the subject, which went 

 through five editions. Lawrence on Ruptures has been for many years 

 past, and will be for many years to come, a standard work on the subject 

 of which it treats. It is remarkable, not only for the thoroughly good 

 English in which it is written, and for clearness and justness of thought, 

 but for the mastery of the subject which it exhibits, and for widely ex- 

 tended and accurate research. 



In the year he obtained the Jacksonian prize, he published a translation 

 of Blumenbach's Comparative Anatomy. About the same time appeared 



