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some years, was in the habit of applying to Cooper; but on some special occasions I was summoned to meet him in consultation, though I held no actual appointment in the royal household until the year 1828, when, on Sir Astley having been appointed Serjeant-Surgeon, I was gazetted as surgeon to his Majesty's person in his place.

In the year 1822, Mr. Griffiths, one of the principal surgeons of St. George's Hospital, having been compelled by ill-health to resign his office, I was, as might have been anticipated, elected without any opposition as his successor. For many years after my first being appointed assistant-surgeon, Sir Everard had very little interfered with the management of his patients, and from this circumstance, and from that of my having had for many years the charge of Mr. Gunning's patients during his absence in the Peninsula, I had abundant opportunities of improving myself in my profession.

In the early part of the year 1823 I sustained a severe loss by the death of my affectionate

friend Sir Thomas Plumer, who sank at last under the influence of a local disease, which had tormented him for fourteen or fifteen years; but which, nevertheless, had not interfered with the able and conscientious discharge of his duties as Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, ViceChancellor, and Master of the Rolls, which last situation he occupied at the time of his death. As I have already mentioned, I had been intimately acquainted with him and his family for eleven or twelve years, had been his frequent visitor at Canons Park, where he resided during his vacations, and had received from him such undeviating kindness and attention as could not but be very acceptable to a young man who was labouring to make his way in a profession, without having as yet reaped the advantage of his labours.

In the autumn of the same year the medical profession was deprived of one who for many years had occupied perhaps the most conspicuous place in it, and was indeed one of its brightest ornaments, by the death of Dr. Baillie. I have already mentioned that he had married my first

cousin, one of the daughters of Dr. Denman. In consequence of this connection, I had the opportunity of becoming well acquainted with him.

The nephew of William Hunter, he had, on his uncle's death, and at a very early period of life, become established as the principal lecturer in the then famous Anatomical School of Great Windmill Street. He had left off teaching anatomy two or three years before I began my studies in London, and after another year he had resigned his office as physician to St. George's Hospital, so that I had no opportunity of personally knowing him as a teacher either in one place or in the other. That he was excellent as a lecturer is proved by his large and constantly increasing class, and by the high estimation in which he was always held by those who had been his pupils. In the beginning of the present century, being then about forty years of age, he had acquired a very considerable share of private practice, which rapidly increased, until it exceeded in extent not only that of any one among his contemporaries, but probably of

any other physician who had preceded him since the days of Radcliffe and Mead. His reputation was of the highest order, as it depended on the opinion entertained of him by the members of his own profession, who always looked up to him as the fittest person to be consulted in cases of difficulty or danger. Their preference of him is to be attributed partly to his knowledge and sagacity, especially in what related to the diagnosis of disease, and partly to his general character, which led him to be always liberal and considerate as to others, at the same time that he never seemed to be anxious about his own reputation, or to take any trouble to obtain peculiar credit for himself. He had also another important qualification for the situation of a consulting physician. He not only had a very clear perception of the matter which was placed before him, distinguishing at once that which was essential from that which was merely incidental; but his habit of lecturing had given him a considerable command of language, which enabled him to explain even a complicated case in the way which was satisfactory to the patient

and his friends. In these explanations he never gave his knowledge for more than it was worth, nor pretended to know more than he knew in reality; and this simple and straightforward mode of proceeding was one reason why the public reposed in him a degree of confidence which those of more ambitious pretensions were wholly unable to attain.

Being the only physician of that time who had been engaged in teaching anatomy, the public naturally, and very justly, considered that he must have some knowledge of disease which others, in his department of the profession, did not possess. But this was not all. Bred up in W. Hunter's museum, of which the anatomy of diseased structures formed an important part, and having had ample opportunities of investigating disease by dissections at St. George's Hospital, he had become, after his uncles, William and John Hunter, the most distinguished pathologist of the day. His work on Morbid Anatomy,' which he had published while comparatively a young man, is still the most valuable textbook on that subject that

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