"Terra salutiferas herbas eademque nocentes
Nutrit, et urtic? proxima s?pe rosa est."15
?
Ovid.

A large London Hospital is (if we may be excused the Hibernianism, as Mr. Abernethy used to call it) a large microcosm. There is little in human nature, of which an observant eye may not here find types or realities. Hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, solace and suffering, are here strangely intermingled. General benevolence, with special exceptions. There is no human good without its shadow of evil; even the benevolent must take care. Impatient sensibility is much nearer a heartless indifference than people generally imagine. The rose, Charity, must take care of the nettle, Temper. The man who is chary or chafed, in yielding that sympathy which philosophy and feeling require, must beware lest he degenerate into a brute.

One of the brightest points in Abernethy\'s character, was, that, however he might sometimes forget the courtesy due to his private patients, he was never unkind to those whom charity had confided to his care. One morning, leaving home for the hospital, when some one was desirous of detaining him, he said: "Private patients, if they do not like me, can go elsewhere; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound to take care of."

But to the hospital. Here we find some that have had the best this world can give—some who have known little but misery: the many no doubt lie between; but all come upon the same errand. Disease is a great leveller. There all flock, as to Addison\'s32 Mountain of Miseries, to get rid of their respective burthens, or to effect such exchanges as benevolence may have to offer, or the grave can alone supply. Our large hospitals have a most efficient "matériel;" the accommodations are extensive, the revenues princely. St. Bartholomew\'s, for example, has a revenue of between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a year, and is capable of receiving six hundred patients.

As regards what is mechanically or physically necessary to the comfort of the inmates, the ample appliances of our large hospitals leave little or nothing to be desired. There is every facility for the execution of the duties, that convenient space and orderly arrangement can suggest; in short, everything, in the general sense of the word, that money can procure. Then there are governors, whose hearts are as open as their purses, whose names are recorded in gold letters, as the more recent or current contributors to the funds of the establishment, and who rejoice in the occasional Saturnalia of venison and turtle; all duties or customs which may be observed, with the gratifying reflection that they are taking the thorns out of the feet of the afflicted; provided only that they do not involve forgetfulness of other duties, the neglect of which may plant a few in their own. The governors determine the election of the medical men, to whom the welfare of the patients and the interests of science are to be entrusted.

We have said that money cannot procure all things, and one of these is mind—a remark requiring some qualification certainly; but this we must refer to a subsequent chapter. Minds such as Abernethy\'s are not to be found every day; and, notwithstanding the sumptuous bill of fare we have already glanced at, there are many things in a large London Hospital yet to be desired—defects which, though it need no great penetration to discover, may, for aught we know, require public attention, a Government altogether better informed as to the actual defects in medical science, and the plastic hand of power, to supply.

Abernethy was elected assistant surgeon of St. Bartholomew\'s Hospital, July 15th, 1787. Sir Charles Blicke, an assistant surgeon, had been appointed to the surgeoncy vacant by the resignation33 of Mr. Pott, and Abernethy succeeded to the assistant surgeoncy thus vacated. The election was contested by two or three other candidates; amongst the rest, by Mr. Heaviside. This gentleman was an eminent surgeon, and a gentlemanly, facetious, and agreeable companion. He was originally in the Guards, and practised in London many years with great credit and respectability. He was fond of science, and expended considerable sums in the formation of an interesting museum. In the earlier part of his life, he gave conversaziones, which were attended by great numbers both of the scientific and fashionable.

He lived in a day when, if a gentleman felt himself insulted, he had at least the satisfaction of being relieved from his sensibility by having his brains blown out in a duel—professionally speaking, by a kind of "operative surgery;" viz. the demolition of the organ in which the troublesome faculty resided. Mr. Heaviside, in his professional capacity, is said to have attended more duels than any other surgeon of his time. This gentleman, albeit not unused to one kind of contest, retired from that at the hospital; which then lay between Mr. Jones and Mr. Abernethy—the former polling twenty-nine, the latter fifty-three votes.

This was an important epoch in the life of Abernethy. It is difficult to adjust the influence which it ultimately exerted, for good or evil, on his future prospects and happiness, or on his relations to science. The hospital had thus secured a man of extraordinary talent, it is true, and in spite of a system which indefinitely narrows the field of choice; but then the same "system" (which we shall by and by describe) kept Abernethy, as regards the hospital, for no less a term than twenty-eight years, in a position which, although it did not exclude him altogether from the field of observation it afforded, did much to restrict his cultivation of it. His talents for observation, nevertheless, and the estimation in which he was soon held, no doubt enabled him, to a certain extent, to bring many of his views to the test of practice. Still, as an assistant surgeon, except in the absence of his chief, he had officially nothing to do; whatever cases he conducted, were only by sufferance of his senior.

To a man of his ability, this was a false and miserably cramped34 position; one, in fact, much better calculated for detecting faults, than for developing the best mode of amending them. As assistant surgeon, he had no emolument from the hospital: he had, therefore, a very reasonable inducement to set about doing that for which he felt himself especially fitted, and to which he had early directed his attention—namely, to teach his profession. The event showed that he had by no means miscalculated his powers. These proved well-nigh unrivalled. The appointment to St. Bartholomew\'s, besides other advantages, gave him an opportunity of lecturing with the prestige usually afforded by connection with a large hospital. He did not, however, at first give his lectures at the hospital, but delivered them in Bartholomew Close.

There was at this time, in fact, no school, properly so called, at St. Bartholomew\'s. Mr. Pott had been accustomed to give about twenty-four lectures, which, as short practical discourses, were first-rate for that period; but there were no other lectures, not even on anatomy; which are essentially the basis of a medical school.

Dr. Marshall, who was a very remarkable man, and no less eminent for his general ability than for his professional acquirements, was at this time giving anatomical lectures, at his house, in Bartlett\'s Buildings, Holborn. In a biographical notice of him, in the "Gentleman\'s Magazine," in which we read that he was giving lectures about the year 1787, it is incidentally remarked, that "in all probability he derived little support from St. Bartholomew\'s Hospital; for that recently an ingenious young gentleman, Mr. Abernethy, had begun to give lectures in the neighbourhood."

Abernethy, who seems to have been always seeking information, certainly attended some of Marshall\'s lectures; because he would occasionally refer to anecdotes he had heard there. He had thus listened to most of the best lecturers of his day—Sir William Blizard, Dr. Maclaurin, Mr. Pott, and Dr. Marshall. To the experience which he had thus acquired, and with the early intention of applying it, he added a remarkable natural capacity for communicating his ideas to others. We thus begin to perceive35 his early cultivation of that aptitude for lecturing which no doubt greatly contributed to the excellence which he ultimately achieved in that mode of instruction.

We desire to impress this feature in his education, because by and by it will, with other things, assist us in a rather difficult task: that is, an attempt to analyze the means by which he obtained such a power over his audience. He thus became a teacher at the age of twenty-three, at a large hospital where he was about to commence a school, of which he would be at first the sole support. This necessarily involved a fearful amount of labour, for an organization, active and energetic, but by no means of great physical power.

Labour, to be sure, is the stuff that life is made of; but then, in a fine organization like Abernethy\'s, it should be directed with economy of power, and in application to the highest purposes. Such an organization should, if possible, have been relieved from the drudgery which lies within the sphere of more ordinary capacity. Ready as we are, then, to congratulate the young philosopher, about to display his powers on a field where he was so successful, still misgivings creep in which restrain, or at least moderate, our enthusiasm. Unusual ability, no doubt, allows men to anticipate the order which, as the rule, Nature seems to have assigned to the pursuits of intellect; but we must not suffer ourselves to be blinded to the rule, by the frequency of the exception. Youth is the time for acquiring knowledge; and, although there is no reason why the fruits may not be imparted to others as fast as they are gathered, still, when the larger space of a man\'s time at twenty-three is devoted to teaching merely, it may reasonably be doubted whether it be such a disposition of it as is best calculated to economise his power, or develop the maximum of its ............