patients in 1794. Clinical lectures are given in it by the surgeons and physicians. Shortly after the opening of the New University buildings, the Western Infirmary was erected, a large building measuring 500 feet by 240. It is situated in a fine, airy and open locality, and it has been authoritatively declared to be one of the best establishments of the kind in Britain. It contains 400 beds for medical and surgical patients, including wards for skin diseases, and one for diseases peculiar to females; it has also a full staff of physicians and surgeons. Several courses of clinical instruction are given. There are also in Glasgow an Eye Infirmary; Dispensaries for Diseases of the Skin and Ear; and in the Royal Lunatic Asylum, at Gartnavel, clinical instruction on insanity is given.

In short, Glasgow possesses all the requisites of a great medical school in an ample degree. In the session of 1884-85, the number of matriculated students in the faculty of medicine was 679; and with its many and invaluable advantages, this school should have a great and beneficent career before it.

At the

The medical school of Aberdeen is a recent development. opening of the present century there was one professor of medicine. in King's College, and in Marischal College there was one professor of medicine and a professor of chemistry. A chair of anatomy was instituted in 1839, and a chair of surgery the same year; and a chair of medical jurisprudence was established in 1857. In short, the late Dr. Pirrie, the first professor of surgery, the late Dr. Macrobin, Dr. Dyce, and Dr. Francis Ogston, were the founders of the Aberdeen medical school, as they first gave it a reputation in the second quarter of this century.

But it may be said that it was not till after the union of King's College and Marischal College, which was completed in 1860, that there was a well constituted and organised medical school in Aberdeen. After the union of the Colleges, the buildings of Marischal College were assigned to the classes of the medical faculty and the faculty of law; and though the accommodation for the medical classes was then more than sufficient, owing to the greatly increased number of students attending these classes in recent years, it has now become quite inadequate, and several of the professors experience difficulty in conducting their classes within the existing apartments.

Since this was written, a movement for the extension of Marischal College buildings has assumed a practical form. A plan of new buildings has been sanctioned, consisting of new class-rooms-em

braced in the north and south wings of the extension scheme, a grand new graduation hall, heightening of the central tower, and other extensions. A large part of these has been erected.

The hall and the tower are characteristic parts of the new buildings. The most attractive feature of the hall is the fine memorial window in its east end, which is 32 feet in height and 28 feet in breadth. It is designed to illustrate the history of the College by a series of finely coloured heraldic and portrait representations. There are four tiers of panels in it, which are beautifully embellished with the armorial bearings of George Keith, fifth Earl of Marischal, the founder of the College; the armorial bearings of eleven Chancellors of the College; those of thirty benefactors of the College; and the portraits of a number of the distinguished alumni of the College and University. There are other ten windows in the hall-five on each side, which are decorated with various coloured emblems in a fine symmetrical style. The hall is a magnificent structure.

The tower is 248 feet in height. It is in clustered style, well formed, proportionate, and attractive to the eye. The tower and the hall were gifts to the University from the late Dr. Charles Mitchell, Newcastle-on-Tyne, who in all gave £32,000 to the University extension scheme.

At the date of the union of the Colleges four new chairs were established, namely, the chair of institutes of medicine or physiology, the chair of materia medica, the chair of midwifery, and the chair of botany; while the chair of natural history was also renewed. A chair of pathology was founded by Sir Erasmus Wilson in 1882. Altogether there are eleven chairs in the medical faculty of Aberdeen.

Courses of lectures and practical instruction are regularly given by the medical staff of the Royal Infirmary, and other institutions, on the following branches: clinical medicine, clinical surgery, pathological demonstrations, diseases of the skin, diseases of the ear and larynx, dental surgery, the eye and practical ophthalmology, sanitary science, and, finally, insanity.

The body of professors in the medical faculty of the University are able instructors; while the staff of the Royal Infirmary are well qualified and careful teachers of the special branches which they profess. The result is, that within the last thirty-five years the standard and reputation of the Aberdeen medical school has risen rapidly; and it has sent out a large number of admirably qualified

graduates, many of whom have taken a front rank among the eminent physicians and surgeons of the time.

Dr. Pirrie was a native of the parish of Gartly, in Aberdeenshire, and was appointed professor of surgery in 1839. He was a successful teacher, a clear and careful expositor of the principles of surgery, and for many years one of the surgeons of the Royal Infirmary. He had the reputation of being an able operator. He is the author of an elaborate work entitled The Principles and Practice of Surgery, the third edition of which appeared in 1873, thoroughly revised and enlarged. The work extends to forty-six chapters, and the whole subject is ably treated in a plain, simple, and clear style. As a very short specimen, the following is from his chapter headed "Injuries of the Brain "—the special point being concussion of the brain :—

"Causes. The injury which is termed by British authors concussion of the brain, by French commotion, and in common parlance stunning, is produced by one or other of the three following causes : a blow, or a fall on the cranium itself, or a fall from a considerable height on some other part of the body, as the buttocks, or the feet, by which a sudden shock is communicated to the brain, through the medium of the vertebral column. I lately had under my care a mason, in whose case there were strongly marked symptoms of concussion, caused by his falling from the second floor of a house on his buttocks; and I am at present attending to a female, who, in consequence of the horse becoming restive, jumped from the top of a cart loaded with hay, and alighted on her feet, sustained fracture of one leg and concussion of the brain. The spine in these circumstances is suddenly brought into a state of rest, and the head being still in projectile motion is forcibly struck against the summit of the vertebral column, the sudden jerk thus communicated to the brain occasions concussion."

The late Dr. Keith was one of the most eminent practical surgeons and lithotomists of his time. He acted for many years as one of the surgeons of the Royal Infirmary. Dr. Kerr and Dr. Fiddes were also able surgeons.

Dr. Alexander J. Lizars was professor of anatomy from 1841 till his death in 1863. He is the author of a text-book entitled Elements of Anatomy, which evinces considerable powers of classification and exposition. The late Dr. Francis Ogston, the first professor of medical jurisprudence in this University, who delivered lectures for a quarter of a century, and retired from the chair in 1883, was a

gentleman of vast experience and considerable culture. He published his lectures on medical jurisprudence in 1878, in two volumes; and they contain an able and remarkably clear exposition of the subject. The work has been recognised at home and abroad as a high authority.

In the preceding part of this chapter attention has been directed to those specially engaged in teaching medicine in Scotland, and although my space is almost exhausted, still some notice should be given of a few other Scotsmen who have attained distinction in this profession. Dr. James Douglas 25 was one of the earliest and most distinguished teachers of anatomy in Britain. After completing his studies, he settled in London as a teacher, and attained great success. In 1707, he published his Specimen of Comparative Anatomy, and it gave the most correct account of the muscles which had up to that time appeared. In 1715, his Specimen of Anatomical Bibliography was published, in which he gives an account of the various works on anatomy, with sketches of their authors; and in 1726, he published a treatise on lithotomy, under the title of A History of the Lateral Operation for the Stone. A second edition appeared in 1733, with an appendix presenting a comparative view of the methods of operating by different lithotomists, and especially that recommended by Cheselden. 26 Douglas also contributed a number of papers to the Royal Society, on the anatomy of some of the generative organs, and reports of various cases in surgery.

Dr. William Hunter was born on the 23rd of May, 1718, at Kilbride, in Lanarkshire. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, which he entered at the age of fourteen, and passed five years studying there. Afterwards he received assistance in the prosecution of his medical studies from Dr. Cullen at Hamilton, and in 1740, he attended the medical lectures in the University of Edinburgh. In the summer of 1741, he proceeded to London, and almost immediately began his great career as an assistant to Dr. Douglas; but Douglas died in 1742. Hunter continued his course, and attained distinction as a lecturer and a practising physician, gained wealth and honour,

25 Born in 1674; died in 1742.

26 His brother, John Douglas, was surgeon to the Westminster Infirmary, and the author of several works. In 1736, he published A Short Account of the state of Midwifery in London, in which he severely criticised the works of Chamberlen and Chapman ; and in another publication he derided the obstetric forceps invented by Smellie.

and collected his remarkable museum, which he finally bequeathed to the University of Glasgow.

Dr. William Hunter's writings consist of a series of papers on several of the internal organs of the human body; a few of his introductory lectures on anatomy which he left fully written out: but his principal work is The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, which appeared in 1775, and a more complete edition was issued by Dr. Baillie in 1794. As a teacher of anatomy he was deservedly celebrated. "He was a good orator, and having a clear and accurate conception of what he taught, he knew how to place in distinct and intelligible points of view the most abstruse subjects of anatomy and physiology. .. He had the talent of infusing much of his ardour into his pupils, and if anatomical knowledge is more diffused in this country than formerly, we are indebted for this, in a great measure, to his exertions. 27 He died on the 30th March, 1783, in

London.

William Cruickshanks, the son of an officer in the excise, was born at Edinburgh in 1745. He received the rudiments of his education at the schools of Edinburgh and went through a complete course of medical study at the University of Glasgow. After devoting his attention for eight years to medical science, he proceeded to London and obtained the office of librarian to Dr. William Hunter. Shortly after Dr. Hunter appointed him as his assistant; and ultimately admitted him as a partner in superintending his establishment in Windmill Street. On the death of Dr. Hunter, the students of the school presented an address to Cruickshanks and Dr. Baillie, requesting that they might assume the superintendence of the school, which they did. Cruickshank's work on The Anatomy of the absorbent vessels of the Human Body appeared in 1786, and it has been translated into several languages. He was also the author of a few other papers on points connected with his profession. He was an able anatomist, a skilful surgeon, and an exceedingly generous and benevolent man. He died in 1800.

John Hunter, a younger brother of the above, was born at Long Calderwood, in the parish of Kilbride, Lanarkshire, on the 13th of February, 1728. In 1748, he joined his brother in London, and commenced to work in the dissecting-room, under the instruction of his brother's assistant. In the summer of 1749, Dr. William Hunter 27 Account of the Life and Writings of William Hunter, M.D., F.A.S., and S.A., 1783.