14 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. I. 
kinds of architecture, from the square Roman tower 
and baronial portcullised gateway and keep of the 
early Plantagenets, to the fortress built in the 
time of Elizabeth, and to those more modern 
imitations erected according to the exigencies of 
a model prison. The old square tower, with walls 
of exceeding thickness — Hadrian’s Tower it 
was called — was divided by four or five storeys 
into as many spacious but low-roofed apartments, 
which were accessible by a spiral stone staircase 
lodged in a corner turret ; the top room of all, 
being the highest and most airy, was used as the 
hospital for the gaol. Here indeed we exercised 
privileges, which the less favoured surgeon’s 
pupils of the town could only hope to enjoy in 
their metropolitan career at the hospitals. The 
inquests held over all the unfortunates who by 
natural death are liberated from prison gave 
us the opportunities of becoming early initiated 
in practical anatomy. I eagerly embraced this 
opportunity of initiation, to which I looked for- 
ward not without feelings of awe, such as might 
well mingle with the scientific aspirations of a 
youth of sixteen but three weeks emancipated 
from the old-fashioned school, where super- 
naturalism had always llourished. In my school 
days no youthful sceptic had ever ventured 
a doubt as to the raising of the devil by the 
process of muttering the Lord’s Prayer backwards. 
The influence of a score of school myths of a 
