TRAVELS

IN

EUROPE AND THE EAST.

ENGLAND.

DURING thirty-five years' absence from England, being the period elapsed since I was completing my education there, I found almost a new medicine had sprung up, a novum organon, under the extending and wholesome conquests of the Baconian philosophy, which holds, it may be said, the juste milieu or equipoise of inductive reasoning between the finespun abstractions of theory and an undue multiplication of embarrassing details. A philosophy which must prevail and spread its light over the earth, while founded as it is on such just principles, to whatever science those principles be applied.

I had scarcely set foot in London, when my natural anxiety to see my old preceptor, SIR ASTLEY COOPER, induced me almost immediately to call upon him. I found him out, but, wishing to surprise him, I did not leave a card, and, ascertaining the hour he would be at home to receive patients, repaired thither the following day. While waiting in the antechamber, Sir Astley and lady arrived in their carriage and passed through the hall. I awaited my turn with the crowd that daily resorted for professional advice to the mansion of this C

now deceased and lamented man, one of the greatest ornaments of our profession; and when the number came to my turn, made my appearance before him, and, standing face to face, could not resist the pleasure of offering him my hand. He returned the salutation, and I remarked, "Do you remember me?" He paused, and gazed for some seconds, when I was going on to explain, though at that time my ill health would have well justified me in appearing under the plain cognomen of a patient. But the gratification of once more beholding my revered and beloved preceptor was too great to allow me much longer to conceal myself under an assumed incognito. Sir Astley, seeing me about to unravel the mystery, exclaimed, "Stop! don't tell me!" and instantly afterward said, "It is Dr. Mott;" when, of course, mutual greetings ensued, and a most refreshing and agreeable interview, in glancing at the reminiscences of the past, and in booking-up and comparing notes for the long interval that had elapsed since we had seen each other.

In conversing with Sir Astley upon the immediate cause which had led to my visit to Europe, he fully accorded with me in the belief that I had embraced the only remedy left for me; and that all the ills I was labouring under were imputable to the broken-down state of my nervous system, from incessant and unwearied occupation in my profession. For, said he, no man but a surgeon knows the exhausting demands made, not only upon our physical, but upon our moral and mental energies. Indeed, I asked him if he did not believe that the vulgar opinion in respect to the proverbial insensibility or apathy of surgeons was, in fact, the reverse of the truth. For certainly, I remarked, no persons are thrown into situations so peculiarly calculated to harrow up the feelings even of those whose hearts are deemed

to be of stone, and their nerves callous to ordinary impressions. He replied that such was the truth, and that, for that very reason, there were no classes whom he had ever remarked to be so liable to diseases of the heart, both functional and organic, as soldiers and surgeons. And this may not seem so paradoxical when we reflect that the attractive brilliancy and applauding honours that follow those who have acquired distinction by master operations in surgery, invite to our profession men of the most finely-constructed minds, and keenest perception and sensibility. Such men are strongly influenced by the motive to acquire and win the approbation of their fellow-men, and are prompted also in the pursuit of surgical distinction as well by the virtuous ambition for honourable fame, as by the enthusiastic impulses of benevolent sentiments to devote their lives to the relief of their fellow-creatures.

Sir Astley said he had no doubt, if I relaxed myself by travel from the pursuit of my profession, I would entirely recover. And the judgment of this truly eminent man was in this, as in so many other cases, verified to the letter.

We frequently met at each other's residences during my different visits to London, and he often reverted in our conversation to the delight he felt in recollecting his American pupils, and what our country had done for surgical as well as medical science. I never shall forget one of those interviews. Even at the advanced age of sixty-eight, he insisted on my accompanying him from his study to his dissecting-room, which, as is usual with surgeons of his rank in Europe, was in his own house. Here he commenced showing to me the fruits of one of his last curious and interesting researches, the thymus gland, of which, while he discoursed with

A

all the intense ardour of youth, he exhibited to me a series of most remarkable preparations, completed by his own hands, and demonstrating an anatomical accuracy and pathological acumen which, though astonishing, did not astonish me, who from my youth had marked the course of his life, and knew that there was nothing of a patient or investigating character in our profession that his great mind could not encompass. mind not brilliant, but sound, inductive, and of sleepless energies, and specially adapted for abstruse anatomical inquiry; while, also, his dexterity with the knife enabled him to give to his operations a finish and a neatness seldom or never surpassed. There could not, perhaps, be offered a more beautiful testimonial of his passion for his own profession, than the subject to which I have alluded, and upon which he bestowed so much attention. Though apparently humble and obscure, the thymus gland was, for that very reason, one that he deemed of sufficient importance to require the light of his most profound examination. And let me here add, in tribute to the virtues and abilities of this illustrious surgeon, that there are none who are more indebted to him than the fairer portion of our race; for to them he devoted the last energies of his life, and for them accomplished one of his noblest triumphs. We mean his work on the Diseases of Female Breasts. In this his last labour he expired; and it may truly be said that he died with the harness of his profession upon him.

The last interview I had with my honoured preceptor was the evening before I left London, when he called at my lodgings; and before I grasped his hand, which I feared would be, as it mournfully proved, for the last time, he in the most touching and affectionate manner begged me to accept a beautiful case of surgical instru

ments, of his own invention, as a souvenir of his regard, and as a token of friendship for me.

Another case of splendid instruments (being for amputation) was also kindly presented to me as a souvenir by his distinguished nephew, Brandsby Cooper, Esq. They are of rare and exquisite beauty, the handles being of the wood of Old London Bridge, and the blades of the iron from the same. The wood is of old English oak, and in perfect preservation, though, as appears by the date engraved on the handles, they were taken from timbers laid down in 1176, and not removed until 1831, being a space of 655 years.

I cannot leave the subject of Sir Astley Cooper at this moment, when we all deplore his loss, without a retrospective glance at some incidents connected with his brilliant professional career as a surgeon.

While a pupil of his in 1807, I saw him perform the first successful operation ever performed of tying the common carotid for aneurism, this now everyday operation being then deemed one of the boldest strokes of scientific surgery: a fact alone sufficient to show what rapid strides the art has made within the short space of thirty years, among the actors in which scenes of its greatest triumphs Sir Astley Cooper could have truly said,

"Quorum magna pars fui."

He was among the first, also, with his distinguished and original contemporary, John Abernethy, to tie successfully the external iliac. This his first essay in that operation I also witnessed. And he was also the first in the bold attempt, though unsuccessful for want of the improved American artery instruments used to-day, to tie the left subclavian within the scaleni muscles.

Amid all his arduous occupations in the practice of