55 
This, however, was a source of income which could not he otherwise 
than temporary, and in the course of time his patient died, and he 
had once more to look for a field of practice. He went to Paris, 
and to enable him to practise there he took the degree of M.D. of 
Paris in 1870, using for the thesis which he was bound to present 
to the Faculty the old subject of the Entrance of Air into the 
Veins, with the addition of his further observations which have 
been already mentioned. The sun seemed at last to be shining on 
his side of the hedge. Sir Joseph Oliffe, then the leading English 
physician in Paris, was old, and soon died, and Cormack got into 
good practice among the English, and to some extent among the 
French community. He was appointed physician to the British 
Embassy, and all seemed to be getting on prosperously with him. 
But soon the Franco-German war broke out, and with it came the 
downfall of the Second Empire. Paris was besieged by the Germans, 
and after this disaster the Commune followed. Cormack’s prospects 
of an easy-going practice were thrown to the winds, and, like every 
one in Paris, he felt how hard are the uses of adversity. But now it 
was in this dark hour of disaster that Cormack really came forth 
in great form and showed what was in the man. Amid the silent 
horrors of a severe winter, and the loud-sounding horrors of foreign 
invasion and civil war, he showed that he was a good man, by 
bringing out of his professional treasure things new and old. It 
was not now the work of a civil practitioner, but that of a military 
medical officer, that he had to undertake. If anything be needed 
to prove the propriety of every aspirant to the medical profession, 
being ascertained, before he gets his degree, to be qualified, not 
only in one, but in all the practical branches of his profession, 
Cormack’s case would supply it. His whole work hitherto had 
been essentially that of a physician, he now came out strongly as an 
operating surgeon, bringing to the front the surgical lessons he had in 
his youth received from Lister, Syme, and others in the surgical 
wards in the Edinburgh Infirmary, and some of his cases were really 
triumphant results of conservative surgery. It was in the Ambulance 
Anglaise , established near his then residence, and maintained 
entirely by Sir Richard Wallace, that he did his surgical work, and 
the writer of this notice saw one of his triumphs in the person of 
the Communist, Alphonse Brunet, whose arm he saved by resection 
