Eminent doctors: Their lives and their work; Vol. 1 of 2

EMINENT DOCTORS.
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON
G. T. BETTANY, M.A. (Camb.), B.Sc. (Lond.), F.L.S.
AUTHOR OF “FIRST LESSONS IN PRACTICAL BOTANY,” “ELEMENTARY PHYSIOLOGY,” ETC. AND LECTURER ON BOTANY IN GUY’S HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCHOOL.
“There is to me an inexpressible charm in the lives of the good, brave, learned men, whose only objects have been, and are, to alleviate pain and to save life.”
—G. A. Sala.
IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
LONDON: JOHN HOGG, PATERNOSTER ROW.
Medical Biography has not taken its due place in the thoughts of our countrymen, nor has it received deserved attention from literary men. Anecdotes of big fees, brilliant operations, brusque actions, or suave politeness, have too exclusively contributed to form the popular idea of eminent physicians and surgeons. Aikin’s incomplete “Biographical Memoirs of Medicine,” Macmichael’s “Lives of British Physicians,” and Pettigrew’s “Medical Portrait Gallery,” have been the chief collective records of British medical men; and the latter, owing to its expensive form, was inaccessible to most persons. Munk’s “Roll of the College of Physicians” is a mine of information about members of that College, and a similar record of members of the College of Surgeons would be invaluable. In 1865 Dr. Herbert Barker commenced, and after his lamented death Dr. Tindal Robertson continued, a series of memoirs of living medical men, accompanied by photographs. The Midland Medical Miscellany commenced to publish a somewhat similar series of memoirs, with portraits, in 1882. The medical press has been distinguished for the ability and general fidelity of its biographical notices of deceased members of the profession.
There is no book, however, in current literature which supplies medical men or the general public with biographical accounts of the most notable men who in this kingdom have contributed to make the medicine and surgery of to-day what they are. It is the aim of the present book to occupy this vacant place. It is hoped that this has been done in a form neither too technical for the general reader, nor unsuitable for the busy practitioner, who has very little time to read elaborate biographies, but would fain store his mind with the principal facts and lessons of the lives of his great predecessors and teachers.