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With such, a father and such surroundings, he was sure to have 

 the best up-bringing and best direction. For the education of his 

 boyhood he was sent to the Edinburgh High School, and had 

 amongst his school-fellows John Murray — the eminent publisher — 

 with whom he maintained a life-long friendship, also the present 

 Lord Moncrief. and Thomas Constable. His professional education 

 (mainly directed by his father) was begun at the Extra-mural School, 

 and completed at the University of Edinburgh, and at the medical 

 schools of Paris. In August, 1830 (at the age of twenty-one) 

 he graduated as M.D. of the University of Edinburgh, when his 

 graduation thesis "on the development of the heart and blood- 

 vessels in vertebrate animals," was significant of the bent of his 

 mind towards embryology, and foreshadowed the honourable dis- 

 tinction which he subsequently achieved in that branch of biology 

 which deals with developmental anatomy and physiology. It was 

 published in the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal' ('Jameson's 

 Journal'), commencing in 1830, p. 295, and continuing through three 

 consecutive parts of that journal — a long contribution, fully and 

 beautifully illustrated by drawings mostly the work of his own facile 

 pencil, and many of them coloured. At the time of his graduation 

 he was President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh — a 

 students' society, which has contributed, and continues to contribute, 

 not a little to the fame of the Medical School of that city, inasmuch 

 as on the roll of its Presidents will be found the names of many, who 

 in after-life became distinguished members and leaders in the pro- 

 fession.* The year after graduation (1830) Allen Thomson became a 

 Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, as a necessary 

 preliminary to his being qualified as a teacher there. It was his own 

 wish and his father's great desire that he should become a teacher of 

 anatomy, and devote himself to anatomical and physiological pur- 

 suits, for which he had displayed a decided predilection, and to which 

 (as his thesis showed) he had already given a considerable share of 

 attention. 



With this object in view, and following the example of his friend 

 Dr. Sharpey, he travelled by himself on the Continent in 1831. His 

 copious notes show that he then particularly interested himself in 

 the preparations in Vrolik's Museum at Amsterdam, which he 

 describes as a valuable collection in a state of excellent preservation. 

 In it he notes a very fine collection of skulls of different nations and 



* " On its roll are inscribed the honoured names of Thomas Addison, Eicbard 

 Bright, Marshall Hall, Henry Holland, and others of Metropolitan fame, with 

 those of equal distinction associated with the Scottish and Irish Universities and 

 Colleges, the men, in short, who have been most prominent in the history of British 

 medicine and discovery during the last hundred years." 'Anatomical Memoirs of 

 John Goodsir,' vol. i, p. 76. 



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