IX 



and public addresses afford the best and fullest illustration of his 

 mind and character ; and that he taught no less by example than by 

 precept was known and acknowledged by all who had the privilege 'of 

 his acquaintance. He was, in fact, a living embodiment of the prin- 

 ciples which he so eloquently expounded in his lectures. 



One of his most remarkable and admirable characteristics was his 

 freedom from prejudice, and the judicial impartiality with which he 

 weighed and considered any facts or arguments which might be 

 adduced in opposition to principles and doctrines which he had 

 adopted and publicly taught. A writer in the " British Medical 

 Journal " says of him : " The opinions which he formed were always 

 provisional — formed upon the best evidence then available, but subject 

 to revision. The last edition of his celebrated lectures testifies to his 

 rare gift of judicial impartiality, and to the admirable candour and 

 philosophic modesty with which he revised and altered the opinions 

 of earlier years, and the unfaltering courage with which he avowed 

 such changes of opinion. Among the most notable instances of such 

 changes were the new doctrines which he accepted with regard to the 

 theory of the change of type of disease and the pathology of cholera. 

 In both instances he had watched with careful study the progress of 

 medical knowledge, and in neither did he hesitate at the close of the 

 controversies to which they gave rise, to declare himself convinced 

 in a sense contrary to his former opinion, and to set forth with the 

 utmost clearness and graceful simplicity the new conclusions to which 

 he had been led." 



We have it on the best authority that when one of his medical 

 friends reproached him for having, in the last edition of his lectures, 

 adopted and given his sanction to so many novel doctrines, his reply 

 was, " Although I am advanced in years " (he was then nearly eighty) 

 " I hope I am not too old to learn; " and so to the very last he con- 

 tinued to take a keen interest in the progress of medical science, and 

 the improvement of medical practice. 



G. J. 



Robert Alfred Cloyne Godwin- Austen was the eldest son of the 

 late Sir Henry E. Austen, of Shalford House, near Guildford, a 

 gentleman who was for some time an officer in the Household of 

 William IV, and received the honour of knighthood. The subject of 

 this notice was born at his father's house on the 17th March, 1808. 



Robert A. C. Austen, as he was then called, was sent to a school 

 situated at Midhurst, in Sussex, which at that time had a very high 

 reputation. This school, which was an ancient foundation, had for 

 its head-master Dr. Bay ley, an Oxonian of great classical erudition, 

 who had been an assistant-master at Winchester, and conducted the 

 establishment on the plan of the great public schools. It is a remark- 



VOL. XXXVIII. ' C 



