EMINENT DOCTORS:
Their Lives and their Work.

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. II.

LONDON:
JOHN HOGG, PATERNOSTER ROW.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAP.		PAGE
XI.	ADDISON, BRIGHT, AND THE DISEASES WHICH BEAR THEIR NAMES	[1]
XII.	LISTON, SYME, LIZARS, AND THE NEWER SURGERY	[24]
XIII.	BAILLIE, HALFORD, CHAMBERS, AND HOLLAND, THE FASHIONABLE AND COURTLY PHYSICIANS	[51]
XIV.	SIR WILLIAM FERGUSSON AND CONSERVATIVE SURGERY	[71]
XV.	SIR JAMES SIMPSON AND ANÆSTHETICS	[83]
XVI.	SIR SPENCER WELLS AND OVARIOTOMY	[105]
XVII.	SIR WILLIAM JENNER, BUDD, MURCHISON, AND TYPHOID FEVER	[118]
XVIII.	SIR JOSEPH LISTER AND ANTISEPTIC SURGERY	[135]
XIX.	SIR THOMAS WATSON, SIR DOMINIC CORRIGAN, SIR WILLIAM GULL, AND CLINICAL MEDICINE	[148]
XX.	SIR JAMES PAGET AND SURGICAL PATHOLOGY	[167]
XXI.	WILLIAMS, STOKES, AND DISEASES OF THE CHEST	[178]
XXII.	SIR HENRY THOMPSON AND CREMATION	[194]
XXIII.	GRAVES, HUGHES BENNETT, AND CLINICAL TEACHING	[201]
XXIV.	CONOLLY, MAUDSLEY, AND MENTAL DISEASES	[217]
XXV.	EMINENT SPECIALISTS: SIR ERASMUS WILSON AND SKIN DISEASES; MORELL MACKENZIE AND THROAT DISEASES; COBBOLD AND INTERNAL PARASITES	[239]
XXVI.	EMINENT SPECIALISTS—continued: SIR W. BOWMAN, BRUDENELL CARTER, AND EYE DISEASES; TOYNBEE, HINTON, AND EAR DISEASES	[260]
XXVII.	SIR R. CHRISTISON, SWAINE TAYLOR, AND POISON DETECTION	[285]
XXVIII.	PARKES, GUY, SIMON, AND PUBLIC HEALTH	[295]
INDEX		[307]

EMINENT DOCTORS.

[CHAPTER XI.]
ADDISON, BRIGHT, AND THE DISEASES WHICH BEAR THEIR NAMES.

Operative dexterity, as was natural, arrived more quickly at perfection than did medical treatment. In fact, no one will pretend that medicine has yet travelled far, in comparison with its future achievements, when physiology, pathology, and therapeutics shall have become more complete. Thomas Addison is a specimen of the physicians of genius who have adorned this century. He is known as the discoverer of a disease which bears his name; but his true fame rests upon his practical talent in diagnosing disease.

Dr. Lonsdale, in his volume of “Worthies of Cumberland,” issued in 1873, shows that Addison sprang from the ranks of the yeomanry of Cumberland, and that his forefathers resided during the Commonwealth at “The Banks,” in the parish of Lanercost. Thomas Addison, born in 1636, and Mary his wife, have left their initials carved on an old oaken settle still preserved at The Banks, inscribed with the injunction, “When God doth thee in store, remember thou the poor.” One of his descendants was a Samuel Addison, who became a doctor of medicine, but died at the age of thirty-four. Thomas Addison, a nephew of his, was born in April 1793, at Longbenton, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, where his father was in business, though he retained his farm at The Banks, where his wife lived for the most part. Young Addison clung greatly to the ancestral home, and many years afterwards assembled his wedding guests there. It is on the very site where the Romans encamped during the building of the wall to the Solway Firth; it overlooks the medieval Priory of Lanercost; near by is Naworth, the old Border castle of “Belted Will Howard.”

Thomas Addison was educated at the Newcastle grammar-school under the Rev. E. Moises, and there became a masterly Latin scholar, so that he afterwards took his lecture notes in Latin at Edinburgh. He went direct from school to Edinburgh University, declining to enter as a pupil with an Edinburgh doctor, as his father desired. He was no ordinary student. Independent in thought and action, he was soon recognised by the Royal Medical Society, and made one of its presidents in 1814, an honour which Marshall Hall, and Richard Bright his subsequent colleague, also attained about that time. A striking fact it is that three of the first names of great English physicians of this century should be Edinburgh students, and Presidents of the same Medical Society there. But as yet the London medical schools were only in embryo.

Addison took his M.D. degree in 1815, and afterwards, it is believed, visited the Continental schools; but of this there is no certain evidence. He soon settled in London, in Skinner Street, Snow Hill, in one of the so-called haunted houses. He knew but one man, an old fellow-student, in London. Yet he received nearly sixty guineas in his first year of practice, a very considerable success. He became House Surgeon to the Lock Hospital; then Physician to the General Dispensary, where he studied skin diseases with Bateman. This appointment he held for eight years, and it was of essential service to him. He manifested a keen eye for generic distinctions and individual varieties, and might probably have succeeded to Bateman’s position in regard to skin diseases. But he was not to be made into a specialist. As Dr. Lonsdale says, “with Addison the investigation of any disease meant the full exercise of his abilities till he had mastered it, and having done this, he could not rest till he broke up fresh ground for tillage.” He dreaded becoming a specialist; it savoured of quackery. He always held that the true physician must understand surgery well; and that the good surgeon must know the principles of medicine.

In 1819 or 1820 commenced Addison’s association with Guy’s. He early attracted the attention of the energetic and discerning treasurer, Mr. Harrison, then the beneficent despot of Guy’s, and was by him appointed Assistant-Physician in 1824. This was a victory for unconventional procedure, for it had always been the custom to appoint men at Guy’s who had been original pupils, and not to receive men who were already qualified and in practice into the charmed circle. It was soon evident that a great practical physician had joined the hospital staff, and he was further recognised in 1827 by receiving the lectureship of Materia Medica. Here his attractive powers were made evident by the large classes he drew around him, at a period when medical students entered for individual courses of lectures, and did not as a rule take the whole of their instruction at one school. He must have received between £700 and £800 from these lectures in some years. Men felt that he was the man to sustain and increase the fame of Guy’s.

In 1829 Dr. Addison published, in conjunction with John Morgan, Surgeon to Guy’s, an essay on “The Operation of Poisonous Agents on the Living Body.” Strange to say, this was the first serious investigation in England into the phenomena of general poisoning. The authors believed that a direct influence on the nerve filaments distributed to the blood-vessels accounts for the rapid effects of some of them. In 1830, Addison published a pamphlet on some disorders of females, vigorously combating some received notions, and objecting to the system of depletion. In concluding a lengthy lecture to his class on this subject, he showed the sentiments which animated him by the following remarks: “Gentlemen, if you require an apology for detaining you so long, I find ample material for that apology in the lively interest in which we must all feel in the comfort and happiness of the other sex, doomed as they are, both by the decrees of Providence and by human institutions, to drink deep of the bitter cup of suffering. Whatever may be her lot in this world, we, as men, must at least acknowledge that, whilst Infinite Power gave us being, Infinite Mercy gave us women.”

In 1837 Addison was elected full Physician to the Hospital, and was appointed joint-lecturer with Dr. Bright on Medicine. About this time he commenced with his colleague the “Elements of the Practice of Medicine,” of which the first volume only appeared, chiefly written by Addison. It was most highly valued, but neither author could be induced to complete it. Valuable monographs in number came from his rich experience: two on Pneumonia in 1837 and 1843; Observations on the Anatomy of the Lungs in 1840; the Pathology of Phthisis, 1845, in which he laid down the principle that inflammation constitutes the first instrument of destruction in every form of phthisis. This early advocacy of a doctrine which has thrown much light on this disease was strongly opposed by the physicians of his day, and stamped Addison as a powerful innovator. He was much impressed by Laennec’s views, and acquired very great power of diagnosing from auscultation of the chest. Yet, candid ever in confessing ignorance, he read a paper before Guy’s Physical Society in 1846, “On the Difficulties and Fallacies attending Physical Diagnosis of Diseases of the Chest.” Among other subjects, he dealt with Diseases of the Liver, Affections of the Skin, Disorders of the Brain connected with Diseased Kidneys, and “the Influence of Electricity as a Remedy in certain Convulsive and Spasmodic Diseases,” in every case bringing together facts hitherto disconnected, and contributing markedly to advance medicine as a science.

The achievement of Dr. Addison, however, which has attracted most general notice, is his discovery of a disease of the supra-renal capsules, the small organs adjacent to the kidneys, whose function has not yet been satisfactorily ascertained. We are told that in one case, which had baffled all investigation, Addison was called in, and after careful enquiry, stated positively that the patient suffered from a disease of these organs, which would before long prove fatal. This opinion was received with polite incredulity, but it was justified by the result, and the supra-renal capsules were the only organs that were found diseased. This extraordinary diagnosis was soon noised abroad, and on the Continent brought Addison more honour than in England. Trousseau in France was cordially supported in naming it “la Maladie d’Addison” (Addison’s disease), a name which it will long retain. But the disease was not discovered in this apparently sudden and striking manner, but was the result of observations carried on for many years, in which his powers of deduction from a few cases and imperfect data were most strikingly evidenced. The disease occurs rarely, and very few hints or materials for comparison were available. A form of wasting disease without any apparent organic injury had been again and again observed—bloodlessness, extreme prostration, and various shades of alteration in the colour of the skin, being prominent symptoms. A certain bronzing of the integument was, and still is, an inexplicable concomitant, and no light was thrown upon it till Addison, carefully examining the organs of a deceased patient, when no other disease could be detected, discovered signs of malady in the supra-renal capsules. He identified the disease, and though he did not absolutely mark it out from all others, he gave a very perfect account of the symptoms in the cases which he had met with, and showed that no other disease could be connected with them—indeed no other disease of these capsules has been discovered.

As a teacher Addison was impressive and popular. His interest in his class was genuine and unfeigned; he was eager to draw out the talents of his students. Among his pupils were Dr. Golding Bird, too early called from his brilliant career, Sir William Gull, Dr. Wilks, and many others of note. His clinical teaching in the wards was especially superior. He could most vividly illustrate on the patient, and most clearly define and demonstrate his disease. He disliked anything like interference with his methods by others, and sometimes showed it somewhat brusquely. Once when he had been away from his wards for a few days, a colleague had seen reason to change his treatment of a case of pleurisy. On Addison’s return, he at once inquired the reason, and was told that the physician in charge believed the case to be one of pneumonia and solidification of the lung. “Ah indeed!” said Addison, “give me a trocar;” and he immediately plunged the little instrument into the chest, and drew off a few ounces of fluid, proving the accuracy of his own diagnosis. He wasted no time in considering or discussing probabilities; he was certain, and he proved that he was right.

Dr. Wilks’ view of Addison’s character, in the collected edition of his works published by the New Sydenham Society, 1868, is so pertinent that it must find a place in any adequate account of Addison:—

“His strong, positive, and perpetual insistence upon the term ‘practical,’ in reference to disease, constitutes, indeed, the key to Addison’s character and professional career. He was always ready to discuss newly-started theories, but he never for a moment allowed them to interfere with the results of his matured experience. Possessing unusually vigorous perceptive powers, being shrewd and sagacious beyond the average of men, the patient before him was scanned with a penetrating glance, from which few diseases could escape detection. He never reasoned from a half-discovered fact, but would remain at the bedside, with a dogged determination to track out the disease to its very source, for a period which constantly wearied his class and his attendant friends. So severely did he tax his mind with the minutest details bearing upon the exact exposition of a case, that he has been known to startle the ‘sister’ of the ward in the middle of the night by his presence; after going to bed with the case present to his mind, some point of what he considered important detail in reference to it occurred to him, and he could not rest till he had cleared it up. He has also been known, after seeing a patient within the radius of eight or ten miles, to have remembered on his near approach to London, thinking over the case on his way, that he had omitted some seemingly important inquiry, and to have posted back some miles for the purpose of satisfying his mind on the doubt which had occurred to it. If at last he could lay his finger on the disease, his victory was attained, and his painstaking satisfactorily rewarded. For with him accurate diagnosis was the great, and too often the ultimate object of an industry of search, a correlation of facts deduced from scientific observation, and a concentration of thought rarely combined in the individual physician. To those who knew him best, his power of searching into the complex framework of the body, and dragging the hidden malady to light, appeared unrivalled; but we fear that the one great object being accomplished, the same energetic power was not devoted to its alleviation or cure. Without accusing Addison of a meditated neglect of therapeutics, we fancy that we can trace the dallying with remedies which has been the characteristic of more recent times. ‘I have worked out the disease; if it be remediable, nature, with fair play, will remedy it. I do not clearly see my way to the direct agency of special medicaments, but I must prescribe something for the patient, at least, to satisfy his or her friends,’ seems to have been a part of the habit of mind which can deal satisfactorily only with the observable and proven, and shrinks from the uncertain and questionable.”

Addison did not seek to push himself into notoriety. Indeed he seems to have studiously kept himself in the background as regards public life. He took little pains to seek publication of his researches in the medical journals, and for the most part his excellent papers appear in Guy’s Hospital Reports. Thus his practice was not equal to his great merits, though he died worth £60,000. In professional intercourse he appeared blunt, and even at times rude, giving the idea of hauteur and assumption of superiority. The general practitioner was liable to find him unapproachable, and to conceive of him as a man of large self-esteem. Yet underneath this outward semblance lay a most acute nervousness of temperament. This powerful, well-built, energetic, emphatic man concealed a physical nervousness and susceptibility which most deeply affected him in circumstances of trial. He often said, “I never rose to address the Guy’s Junior Physical Society without feeling nervous;” and yet at the same time he appeared to his audience to be speaking in a tone akin even to bluster. His apparent discourtesy was as far as possible from representing his real sentiments. “Viewed in its professional aspect,” says Dr. Wilks, “no character on record has presented in a higher degree the sterling hard qualities of true professional honesty. We have never heard a single instance in which a word of disparagement of a professional brother escaped him. He would always strenuously, and with all his natural vigour, maintain what he believed to be the truth, but never for the purpose of underrating the opinions of others. His whole bearing in the profession was to the last degree honourable, and anything like jealousy or ill-will against another professional man never entered his mind.”

The chief honour outside his school that fell to Addison was the Presidency of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. But court favour did not shine on him, though none would have more worthily received it. On the Continent, as we have before said, Addison was treated with the utmost distinction. When he visited Paris, Nélaton, Trousseau and the élite of the profession entertained him at a public dinner, and gave him the warmest reception. Addison made an eloquent speech in excellent French. He was a zealous Tory, not approving of Disraeli’s modernised policy, but equally removed from Eldon’s tyrannical rule.

Guy’s Museum of Pathology, adorned by an admirable bust of him by Joseph Towne, bears large testimony to Addison’s energy and discernment. He added to it very largely, and his early study of skin diseases led him to suggest and superintend in execution a plan for illustrating skin diseases by wax models, and carefully coloured drawings from life—a process afterwards extended widely through the range of pathology.

“Every feature of Addison’s face,” says Dr. Lonsdale, “was well defined, and comported well with his finely-proportioned massive head. He had dark hair, large eyebrows, and eyes of deep hazel colour; his nose was pronounced, his lips full and voluble, and rather special in action, and his chin firm and broad; and his general physiognomy was stamped with vigour and unmistakable character throughout. He had a deep penetrating eye, that became full of life and light when engaged in debate. Of commanding presence and firm significant step, he possessed a keen penetrativeness, indeed a special discernment that never failed him in private life, and but rarely at the bedside of the sick. He stood before you the impersonation of power and dignity and independence.” Some persons who knew him well believed that he would have had equal success at the bar, in the senate, in the navy or the Church. Whatever he attempted, he would have mastered, and would have carried out, undisturbed by opposition, undeviating in principle.

Dr. Addison did not marry till he was some years over fifty. His wife was the widow of W. W. Hanxwell, Esq. The wedding, in September 1847, took place in Lanercost Church, and was attended by an unusual incident. Just before the ceremony, and unknown to the party, a storm had blown part of the roof of the church on to the altar table. When he saw the wreckage, Addison exclaimed to his biographer, nervously clutching his arm, “Good God, Lonsdale! is this not ominous?” But his friend, suggesting that any part of the building would do for the ceremony, and the bride smilingly showing no diminution of cheerfulness, reassured the doctor, and all went off well. Mrs. Addison, who had two children by her first husband, but none by the second, survived Dr. Addison twelve years. She is described as extremely amiable, and an excellent wife.

In the spring of 1860 Addison was compelled to retire from his hospital duties by a threatening of brain-disease. He settled at Brighton; but his disease progressed, and ended in his death on 29th June 1860. He was buried at Lanercost on the 5th of July. A marble tablet in the chapel of Guy’s Hospital records that he won the admiration and the confidence of the students of the Hospital by his profound knowledge and earnest eloquence: and that he was beloved by the patients for his unwearied attention and kindness to them. One of the medical wards in the new buildings of Guy’s is named after him “Addison Ward.” It is worthy of note that Addison, like John Bell, was a musician, and ready at learning a new instrument. Being slightly deaf in one ear, he was correspondingly acute with the other. This ear he used with surpassing skill in auscultation of the heart and lungs.

In the preface to an edition of Dr. Bright’s “Clinical Memoirs on Abdominal Tumours,” published by the Sydenham Society in 1861, Dr. Barlow well remarks, “There has been no English physician—perhaps it may be said none of any country—since the time of Harvey, who has effected, not only so great an advance in the knowledge of particular diseases, but also so great a revolution in our habits of thought, and methods of investigating morbid phenomena and tracing the etiology of disease, as has the late Dr. Richard Bright. To those who have received the knowledge of the connections of dropsy, albuminous urine, and disease of the kidney, among the first rudiments of medicine, the facts which establish that connection may appear so simple and easily ascertained, that the amount of labour, the accuracy of the observation and the rigid adherence to the inductive method which characterised the whole of Bright’s researches, may hardly have been suspected, still less adequately appreciated.”

Richard Bright was born at Bristol in September 1789, his father being a member of the wealthy banking firm of Ames, Bright, & Cave, and his elder brother subsequently representing Bristol in three parliaments. His early education was conducted by Dr. Estlin, and later by Dr. Carpenter, both names of note in Bristol. In 1808 he entered at Edinburgh University, at first attending Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Leslie, in whose mathematical class he gained a prize in 1809, commencing the study of medicine under Monro tertius, Hope, and Duncan.

In 1810 Dr. Bright, with Dr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Holland, accompanied Sir George Mackenzie in his journey through Iceland, and contributed notes on botany and zoology, as well as other portions, to “Mackenzie’s Travels in Iceland” (Edinburgh, 1811). Mackenzie acknowledges Bright’s cheerful and ready exertion and undeviating good-humour in the many cross accidents that befel the party. Several times the two medical friends were in imminent danger, and we cannot but be thankful that these lights of medicine were spared to do their life-work.

Returning from Iceland, Bright’s clinical hospital work was commenced at Guy’s Hospital, London, where he lived in the house of a resident officer for two years, a foretaste of the forty years’ residence which he practically made within its walls. Astley Cooper was then in his best form, and young Bright was at once attracted to pathology and post mortem observation. At this early date he made a drawing of a granular kidney, one of the morbid conditions which he was afterwards to do so much to elucidate. In 1812-13 Bright was again a student at Edinburgh, where Gregory was still in full vigour: and he graduated on the 13th September 1813, producing a thesis on Contagious Erysipelas. With the idea of graduating at Cambridge, he entered at Peterhouse, where his brother was a lay-fellow, but he only resided two terms, finding his studies impeded by college discipline. In 1814 Bright was one of the crowd of English voyagers upon the Continent, and made himself conversant with French and German, attending professional lectures especially at Berlin and Vienna. In the spring of 1815 he travelled considerably in Hungary, and the result of his observations, for he was emphatically an observer, was given to the world in his large quarto volume of “Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary, with Remarks on the State of Vienna during the Congress of 1814,” published at Edinburgh, 1818. This was a most valuable contribution on the social condition, statistics, and natural history of that country, then so little known in England. In all this it is evident how much Dr. Bright’s career was facilitated by the comfortable circumstances in which he was placed pecuniarily: not that money gave him his talent, but that it prevented him from suffering from the obstacles and disadvantages which have attended the career of so many physicians.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bright, in the winter of 1814, had been studying cutaneous diseases under Dr. Bateman at the Dispensary. On his return home through Belgium, about a fortnight after Waterloo, he saw many interesting cases of disease among the sick and wounded from the late contending armies. In December 1816 he was admitted a Licentiate of the London College of Physicians, and was soon after elected assistant-physician to the London Fever Hospital, paying the frequent price of a severe attack of fever, which almost cost him his life. In the summer and autumn of 1818 he again visited the Continent, spending a considerable time in Germany and Italy, and returning through Switzerland and France.

From 1820 we may date Bright’s full entry upon his professional career; for he now took a house in Bloomsbury Square for private practice. His election the same year to the assistant-physiciancy to Guy’s Hospital led him to give up the Fever Hospital and concentrate his attention on the work at Guy’s. He became speedily noted for his diligent attendance in the wards, and for tracing the causes of his patients’ symptoms in the post mortem room when they unhappily arrived there. For many years he spent six hours a day in his beloved scene of investigation; and long afterwards, when private practice absorbed more of his time, he longingly looked back upon the past years of cheerful research and successful toil. His progress, well prepared for, was now rapid. In 1821 he was elected F.R.S.; in 1822 he began to lecture on Botany and Materia Medica; and in 1824 he lectured on Medicine, in conjunction at first with Dr. Cholmeley, later taking the whole course alone. Some years afterwards Dr. Addison became associated in this lectureship, and the two famous men for many years upheld and raised the fame of Guy’s by their copartnership.

Bright was not a theorist, was devoid of special doctrines and “views,” but as Dr. Wilks[1] well puts it, “he could see, and we are struck with astonishment at his powers of observation, as he photographed pictures of disease for the study of posterity.” From this Dr. Wilks infers that he did not thoroughly perceive the value of his own work, and that he attached no more importance to diseases of the kidney than to those of the liver and brain, which he also described. Dr. Wilks even regards many observations of Bright as more novel and original when they were published than those relating to the kidney, but the latter were of more value, and their greater significance was at once recognised. It should be distinctly understood that Bright was not simply a specialist in kidney disease, but a clinical physician of rare excellence, who followed his cases into the post mortem room, and carefully observed not only the changes which had taken place in the organ whose disease had caused death, but also the state of all the other organs of the body. He was one of the first, if not the first, to describe acute yellow atrophy of the liver, pigmentation of the brain in melanæmia (or pigmented blood) due to miasma, condensation of the lung in whooping-cough, unilateral convulsion without loss of consciousness in local brain diseases, the bruit of the heart in chorea, the small echinococci on the interior of hydatid cysts, &c.

It is strange indeed that dropsy should have existed so long and its cause have been undiscovered; and that renal disease, as we now understand it, should have been almost unknown. For more than a century before Bright’s work was published the occurrence of albumen in the urine of dropsical persons had been known; and cases had been noted where convulsions and blood-poisoning had occurred when the kidneys had been found small and granular after death. Dr. Blackhall had written a treatise on dropsy in 1813; but though he found the urine albuminous, he rarely went to the post mortem room and examined the kidneys, which indeed might often at that time remain untouched. But until Bright’s first quarto volume of “Reports of Medical Cases,” 1827, appeared, renal disease had not been recognised as an important malady; he was at once hailed as a discoverer, and the malady called after his name. He first showed how to recognise a common form of disease, and systematised what was known about it, and he further demonstrated that there were three or four varieties of it, a view which subsequent investigation has most fully confirmed and developed in most important directions. He proved that not only was there a continual withdrawal from the blood of most important albuminous constituents, but that this was frequently attended with a failure to remove by the kidneys that natural product of waste, namely urea, which remaining in the blood in excess became poisonous, and often produced convulsions and inflammations at a distance from the kidneys. This latter view of the consequences of retained secretion was not adopted without considerable opposition, but fuller inquiry only made its truth more evident. And the adoption of a new truth had its reflex effects in other departments of investigation. Diseases of other excretory organs might possibly be caused in the same way; and so the effects of diseased liver in causing retention of the bile and its circulation in the tissues became anew illuminated; and bile-poisoning and blood-poisoning were placed on a new footing.

Although a large amount of time for many years was given to the investigation of renal cases, many other departments of research were the objects of Dr. Bright’s careful attention. We have already referred to some of these. Perhaps one series of phenomena that he was as much interested in as any was the various tumours of the abdomen, and the means of diagnosing between them. He published in Guy’s Hospital Reports an extended set of monographs on these subjects, which have been published in a collected form by the New Sydenham Society. They are chiefly clinical, illustrated by well-grouped cases, observed and recorded with great care and accuracy, and abounding in important suggestions as to diagnosis and function.

The second volume of “Reports of Medical Cases” appeared, in two parts, in 1831, and contained principally narrations of cases of cerebral and spinal diseases, including paralysis, epilepsy, tetanus, hydrophobia, and hysteria, with observations on their nature and pathology. The many coloured plates in both volumes are of great excellence and authority, being executed under Dr. Bright’s own superintendence. He was afterwards associated with Dr. Addison in the production of the first volume of the “Elements of the Practice of Medicine.” The first volume of Guy’s Hospital Reports, published in 1836, contains no fewer than eight papers from Bright’s own pen. In 1832 Dr. Bright was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1833 gave the Gulstonian lectures at the College, on the Functions of the Abdominal Viscera, with observations on the diagnostic marks of the diseases to which the viscera are subject. In 1836 he was censor, and in 1837 gave the Lumleian lectures on Disorders of the Brain.

In his early years Dr. Bright’s practice was not very extensive. He was disinclined to use any adventitious aids to popular reputation, and was content to pursue his tireless investigations. His publications on renal disease gradually attracted general attention, and the profession found him a most reliable and valuable consultant, so that in his later years he commanded a first-class practice. A few years before his death he resigned his post at Guy’s Hospital, and was made Honorary Consulting Physician. He died on the 11th December 1858, from the consequences of extensive and long-standing ossification of the aortic valves of the heart, the exit for the blood being reduced to a mere chink. He had long suffered very considerably, but was never thoroughly examined in life. However, he believed considerably in the value of medicine, and took large quantities of some kinds. He was buried at Kensal Green.

Bright is described as having had “a remarkably even temper and cheerful disposition: he was most considerate towards the failings of others, but severe in the discipline of his own mind. He was sincerely religious, both in doctrine and practice, and of so pure a mind that he never was heard to utter a sentiment or to relate an anecdote that was not fit to be heard by the merest child or the most refined female. He was an affectionate husband and an excellent father, not only taking the most lively interest in the welfare of his children, and in their pursuits, but never so happy as when he had them around him; so that half the pleasure of the long vacation was lost, unless he had as many members of his family as possible for his companions.” He married, first, the third daughter of Dr. Babington, senior; and secondly a sister of Sir William Follett, by whom he left surviving three sons, one being Dr. Bright of Cannes, and another the Rev. James Franck Bright, the well-known historian, and Master of University College, Oxford.

It is said of Bright that he was perhaps better known abroad than any other British physician of his time. The confidence reposed in him by his professional brethren was dependent largely upon the minute attention he bestowed upon every case. He always took careful notes, and often made drawings, being a good draughtsman and rather a connoisseur in etchings and engravings.

EMINENT DOCTORS:Their Lives and their Work.

[CHAPTER XI.]ADDISON, BRIGHT, AND THE DISEASES WHICH BEAR THEIR NAMES.

EMINENT DOCTORS:
Their Lives and their Work.

[CHAPTER XI.]
ADDISON, BRIGHT, AND THE DISEASES WHICH BEAR THEIR NAMES.