Thomas Lauder Brunton. 



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was established by Buchheim at Dorpat about a.d. I860.* Then quickly 

 followed Buehheim's second foundation at G-iessen in 1869 ; and in 1872 

 those of Binz in Bonn, of Liebreich in Berlin, of Schmiedeberg in Strassburg. 

 Now what these men did abroad, Brunton and Leech were doing in England. 

 In 1866 the present writer, with his colleague Mr. Teale, was experimenting 

 on animals with morphin, and on the curious tolerance of the drug by 

 rabbits ; and in 1868-70 he was studying with Milner Fothergill the effects 

 of digitalis — chiefly on the frog's heart. But without means of maintaining 

 the separated heart in action, and without kymograph and other physio- 

 logical apparatus, beginners had to content themselves with crude inspection 

 The writer had to relinquish much of the digitalis work to Fothergill, who 

 embodied the results in his Hastings Prize Essay for 1870 (published 1871). 



Brunton was appointed Lecturer on Materia Medica at St. Bartholomew's 

 on his 26th birthday, in the year 1871. Leech was appointed (joint) 

 Lecturer on the same subject in Manchester in 1874, Professor in 1881. 

 But Brunton had done good work before he was called to St. Bartholomew's ; 

 indeed, in 1871, he had begun to write his 'Experimental Investigation of 

 Medicine.' He was one of the first of the scientific practising physicians 

 who used no empirical remedy without seeking to discover its mode of action, 

 and, by pharmacological and other research, endeavouring to add to our 

 resources. Bence Jones, Golding Bird, Pavy, were of the generation before 

 him, it is true ; but few physicians whose interests before all else were, and 

 still remained, clinical, followed scientific investigation so systematically and 

 in so disinterested a spirit. In 1868, after passing through the preliminary 

 stages of his medical education with much distinction, he had presented a 

 thesis for the Degree of M.D., also on the action of digitalis, especially in 

 respect of its effect upon the urine ; an essay which recorded a very laborious 

 series of observations upon himself, extending over six months. This thesis 

 was the first-fruits of his many years' labour upon this perplexing drug ; yet 

 of all his researches this was, perhaps, the least rewarded. Like many 

 other pharmacologists, Brunton did not sufficiently distinguish between the 

 effects of larger and smaller doses. Perhaps even yet it is not fully realised 

 that the effects of therapeutical doses of drugs cannot always be reckoned as 

 fractions of the effects of poisonous doses, but may be different in kind. 



On finding himself, at the conclusion of his hospital course in Edinburgh, 

 the holder of a travelling scholarship, and not without some private means, 

 Brunton decided to devote three years to study in foreign laboratories. First, 

 in 1867, he went to Vienna, and there worked in Briicke and Eosenthal's 

 laboratories ; thence to Berlin, still working on digitalis, and deciding that it 

 caused contraction of the peripheral vessels with rise of blood-pressure,f a 

 conclusion now said to be true only of poisonous doses. After a tour in the 

 East we find him, in 1869, in Amsterdam, with Kiihne ; now engaged upon 



* In recent times, perhaps Majendie was the first to work systematically and 

 experimentally with animals on pharmacological problems. — C. A. 



t Brunton and Meyer, ' Journ. of Anat. and Physiol.,' vol. 7, p. 135 (1873). 



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