advanced by being incorporated into a Royal College, as they remain to this day. On leaving Monkwell Street they built, by subscription, the building here shown, which stood partly on the site of the most southern of the buildings now constituting

the Central Criminal Court, and partly on the site of the adjoining dwelling-houses. Some noticeable recollections attach to this place. Through that door in the basement, in the centre of the building, the bodies of murderers, executed at Newgate adjoining, were carried for dissection, according to the Act of 1752, and which was only repealed in the late reign. It was here, we believe, that the extraordinary incident occurred which John Hunter is said to have related in his lectures, of the revival of a criminal just as they were about to dissect him. We have looked in vain for some authentic statement of the circumstances; but if we remember rightly, the operators sent immediately to the sheriffs, who caused the man to be brought back to Newgate, from whence he was, by permission of the King, allowed to depart for a foreign country. It was here that a still more awful exhibition took place, in the beginning of the present century, in connexion with the same subject. In the Annual Register' for 1803, it is stated that "the body of Foster, who was executed for the murder of his wife, was lately subjected to the Galvanic process by Mr. Aldini (a nephew of Galvani), in the presence of Mr. Keate, Mr. Carpue, and several other professional gentlemen. On the first application of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye actually opened. In the subsequent course of the experiment, the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion; and it appeared to all the bystanders that the wretched man was on the point of being restored to life. The

6

object of these experiments was to show the excitability of the human frame, when animal electricity is duly applied; and the possibility of its being efficaciously applied in cases of drowning, suffocation, or apoplexy, by reviving the action of the lungs, and thereby rekindling the expiring spark of vitality."* Such is the notice in the contemporary publication of the day; but the most important part of the proceedings is not here told. We have been informed by those who were present on the occasion, that when the "right hand was raised," as mentioned above, it struck one of the officers of the institution, who died that very afternoon of the shock. In the early part of the present century the College removed to its present site, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

To trace the progress of surgery, step by step, from the state of things illustrated in the foregoing pages, down to its present comparative phase of excellence, or to do fitting honour to the individuals who have been the chief agents of such progress, are matters alike beyond our limits and object; but we may remark, that to two men in particular must we ascribe the high position of surgery and surgeons at the present day-John Hunter and John Abernethy. Each has introduced to the world principles of the deepest import to the welfare of the physical man-each has been a consummate master in reducing these high principles to practice. What John Hunter was we may partly judge from the simple circumstance that he, a surgeon, held, with regard to operation, that the operator "should never approach his victim but with humiliation" that his science was not able to cure but by the barbarous process of extirpation. And Abernethy not only participated in his sentiments, but took every opportunity of enforcing them. It is owing to the exertions of such men that we find one operation only take place now, where twenty would, a century ago, have been inflicted. Of Hunter we shall have to speak further in what we may call the local home of his fame-his Museum at the College of Surgeons. Abernethy, as the latest of our very great surgeons, demands a few words more in connexion with our present subject.

Little is known of Abernethy's early life; even the place of his birth is disputed, the town of Abernethy in Scotland, and that of Derry in Ireland, each claiming the honour. The date was 1763. He received his education at a school in Lothbury, having removed to London with his parents whilst very young. At the proper age he was apprenticed to Sir Charles Blick, surgeon to St. Barthololomew's Hospital, and there commenced a career equally extraordinary for its rapidity and the height to which it conducted him. Abernethy owed much to Hunter, whose pupil he was; his ardent love of physiology, for instance, the basis of his own greatness. It was through his deep insight into this science, and into that of anatomy, which he studied also intensely, that he was enabled to perceive how much empiricism existed in the profession, and his contempt accordingly was lavished with a free tongue. But he pulled down in order to build up, and, with characteristic energy, accomplished both parts of his task. Before Abernethy's time the surgeon treated the locally apparent diseases, which it was his business to cure, as having also a local origin; it was Abernethy who first exposed the

*Annual Register,' 1803, p. 368.

absurdity of this most dangerous, because most untrue, notion, and showed that it was the constitution itself which was disordered, and that there must commence the healing process. He first suggested and proved the practicability of performing two operations of a bolder character than any ever before attempted, the tying the carotid and the external iliac arteries: operations that have since his time been performed with the most brilliant success, and which have in themselves done much to extend the reputation of the English school through Europe. We are not about to retail the numerous, and, in many instances, absurd stories told of this distinguished man, and which have had too frequently the effect of lowering him in public estimation; but one feature of his character belongs to our subject. He was fond of lecturing, and the students were equally pleased to attend his lectures, or his " Abernethy at Home," as they called them, in reference to the wit and humour he was accustomed to regale them with whilst instilling the dry, abstract truths of the study. An eye-witness describes his very mode of entering the lecture-room as "irresistibly droll; his hands buried deep in his breeches pocket, his body bent slouchingly forward, blowing or whistling, his eyes twinkling beneath their arches, and his lower jaw thrown considerably beneath the upper."* Striking off instantly into his subject-gun-shot wounds for instance-he would relate a case which at once riveted the attention, and from which he would proceed to extract the "heart of its mystery," and show wherein failure or success had taken place. He would, then, perhaps, revert to surgery—as it was in the good old days of the barber-surgeons, and contrast it with its present state, enriching every step of his way by the raciest anecdotesby an endless variety of the most amusing episodical matter. One of the richest scenes of the kind must have been his first lecture after his appointment as professor of anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons: a "professional friend," states the author of Physic and Physicians,'+ "observed to him that they should now have something new. What do you mean?' asked Abernethy. Why,' said the other, of course you will brush up the lectures which you have been so long delivering at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and let us have them in an improved form?' 'Do you take me for a fool, or a knave?' rejoined Abernethy. I have always given the students at the hospital that to which they were entitled-the best produce of my mind. If I could have made my lectures to them better, I would certainly have made them so. I will give the College of Surgeons precisely the same lectures down to the smallest details: nay, I will tell the old fellows how to make a poultice.' Soon after, when he was lecturing to the students at St. Bartholomew's, and adverting to the College of Surgeons, he chucklingly exclaimed, "I told the bigwigs how to make a poultice! It is said by those who have witnessed it, that Mr. Abernethy's explanation of the art of making a poultice was irresistibly entertaining." And no doubt if he had lived but a couple of centuries before, and had had to lecture on the barber-surgery of that day, he would have introduced, with equal glee, an explanation of the process which it appears then belonged to some of the most respectable practitioners. The following extract from the list of officers to Heriot's Hospital in the statutes + Vol. i., p.

Mr. Pettigrew's account of Abernethy, in the 'Medical Portrait Gallery.'

109.

compiled in 1627, will explain our meaning :-"One chirurgeon barber, who shall cut and poll the hair of all the scholars of the hospital; as also look to the cure of all those within the hospital, who any way shall stand in need of his art."

[Portrait of Abernethy.]

THE Square of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with its gardens (now revelling in all the sweet luxuriance of May-the white hawthorn and the gold-dropping laburnum), its fine old mansions, its exhibitions, and its historical recollections, is a place pleasant to walk through, and suggestive of interesting and elevated thoughts. Here, for instance, perished Babington, and his youthful and accomplished companions, who, in their sympathy for the captive Queen of Scotland, put aside their own allegiance to Elizabeth, and endeavoured to dethrone, if not slay, her, in favour of Mary: whose own fate they thus precipitated. Here too was Lord William Russell led to the scaffold; the last of those distinguished men, who, during the eventful period comprised between the commencements of the reigns of Charles I. and William III., sealed their political faith in the need and possibility of good government with their blood; and whose trial was one of those cases, which, occurring in a particular country, yet has stirred the heart of universal man, and given poet and painter a theme they delight to dwell on. It was on this trial that, when the Chief Justice told the prisoner any of his servants might assist him in writing anything for him, the memorable answer was returned,"My Lord, my wife is here to do it." And here, to refer to memories of another kind, was D'Avenant's theatre, on the stage of which Betterton performed; a man whose portrait Pope painted (the poet, it will be remembered, occasionally dabbled with the palette and brush); whom Addison and Steele rivalled each other

VOL. III.