110 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Dr William Sharpey. By Dr Allen Thomson. 
Dr William Sharpey was horn at Arbroath in Forfarshire on the 
1st of April 1802. His father was an Englishman, and belonged to 
Folkestone in Kent; hut in the year 1794 he migrated to Arbroath, 
and married Mary Balfour, a native of that town. Mr Sharpey 
having died shortly before the birth of his son William, his widow 
was afterwards married to Dr William Arrott, a medical practi- 
tioner of Arbroath, in whose family the subject of this notice was 
brought up. 
William Sharpey’s education was carried on up to the age of 
fifteen at the public school of Arbroath. In November 1817 he 
entered the University of Edinburgh, as a student in the Faculty 
of Arts, attending the Greek and Natural Philosophy classes. 
In 1818 he commenced his medical studies in the University 
and the Extra-academical School of Edinburgh ; and in 1821, at the 
early age of nineteen, he obtained the diploma of the Edinburgh 
College of Surgeons. He then studied anatomy for some months at 
Brooke’s School in London, and subsequently passed nearly a year 
in surgical and medical study at Paris. Returning to Edinburgh in 
the end of 1822, he graduated in medicine in August 1823, his 
printed inaugural dissertation bearing the title “De Ventriculi 
Carcinomate; ” after which he again spent some time in Paris in 
attendance on the Hospitals and on classes at the Garden of Plants. 
From 1824 to 1826 his plans appear to have remained undecided; 
but having finally resolved to devote himself to anatomical and 
physiological pursuits, for which he had long had a predilection, he 
was desirous to improve himself still more by foreign travel, and 
especially to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the system 
of instruction in the Universities of Italy and Germany. With 
this view he spent more than fifteen months in Switzerland, Italy, 
Austria, and Germany, often journeying on foot with knapsack on 
his back, and storing up in his wonderfully tenacious memory 
that fund of information, anecdote, and incident which surprised 
and delighted those who heard him in after life narrate his travels. 
Reaching Berlin in the autum of 1828, he gave his whole time 
during nine months to the careful dissection of the human body 
and the study of scientific anatomy, in which he had the inestimable 
