xxix 



his future career, his mind being well fitted to make the best rise of 

 all the opportunities he then possessed. 



Dr. Williams, speaking of Laennec, remarks that " the chief 

 discoveries of auscultation and its large development were un- 

 doubtedly his, and have placed him in the foremost rank among the 

 benefactors of mankind." To these, as well as to his personal 

 teaching, says Dr. Williams, " I owe not only* some of the most 

 valuable knowledge that I have ever acquired, but also the opening 

 up of new avenues of knowledge which will be inexhaustible to the 

 end of time. It was the new idea of bringing another sense — the 

 sense of hearing— to aid us in the investigation of the organs in 

 health and disease, and through studying its indications, learning as 

 it were language which would tell us of their changes of condition 

 or motion, that gave vastness to the discoveries of Laennec, and 

 would render them fruitful far beyond his own share in them." 



After his return from Paris, Dr. Williams went first to Madeira 

 with a patient, and subsequently for a few months to Switzerland 

 with Lord and Lady Minto, as travelling physician. 



After his return from this last journey, Dr. Williams' career as a 

 London physician may be said to have commenced. 



He took a house in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, and devoted much 

 time to preparing a work on Auscultation, chiefly of the lungs, and 

 wrote several articles in the ' Cyclopsedia of Practical Medicine,' and 

 afterwards in the ' Library of Medicine ; ' in the latter work, most of 

 the articles relating to diseases of the respiratory organs were com- 

 mitted to his charge. In his work on 'Auscultation,' his object was 

 to bring in the laws of acoustics in order to explain the various 

 marked phenomena, such as the fine crepitation in pneumonia and 

 metallic tinkling signs which had been discovered, but in no way 

 explained, by Laennec. In his article, " Coryza," in the ' Cyclopsedia 

 of Medicine,' the so-called dry method of cure was proposed. 



Dr. Williams made some observations on slow combustion in 1823, 

 and subsequently gave an evening lecture at the Royal Institution, 

 and a paper was read at the Hoyal Society ; Dr, Williams had always 

 an idea, even when he wrote his Memoirs, that the subject had been 

 shelved by scientific men : he thought it might have an important 

 bearing on spontaneous combustion occurring in coal stores, hay-ricks, 

 &c. The existence of slow forms of combustion, however, is quite 

 recognised and appreciated by chemists and physicists, and the slow- 

 combustion of phosphorus must have been known since the discovery 

 of that element. 



In 1830 Dr. Williams married a maternal cousin, Miss Jenkins, 

 and from 1828 to 1835 he was engaged in the investigation of the 

 causes of the sounds of the heart, an investigation which was 

 originated in conjunction with Dr. Hope, but unfortunately some 



