John Abernethy was born of Irish parents about the year 1764. In 1787 he was appointed Assistant Surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and was promoted to the position of Surgeon in 1815. From that date to 1827 he served the hospital with great distinction, attaining wide celebrity as a daring and skilful operator and also as a lecturer of great power. In his lectures he laid much stress upon two principles: First, that local diseases had a constitutional origin; and, second, that this origin could generally be traced to disorders of the digestive system.

George G. Sigmond, M.D., contributed to the London Lancet, of November 11, 1837, a brief but most satisfactory biographic sketch of Abernethy, and from this I copy such portions of the text as are likely to convey to my readers a more perfect picture of this great physician and surgeon than I could possibly provide by resorting to a mere compilation of the facts. Here is his account:—

Few individuals who have adorned our profession, possessed a more clear and accurate knowledge of the principles of our science than Mr. Abernethy, and no one ever explained them with greater simplicity, or with less of the entanglement of barbarous and uncouth names; he was, to the highest degree, plain, and, therefore, thoroughly intelligible. He had none of the deep learning and research of his two contemporaries, Dr. Young and Dr. Mason Good, but he was infinitely their superior in the explanation of his views, for he did not, as they have done, encumber his writings with the hard and unintelligible phrases of the Greeks, nor did he attempt to establish systems founded upon artificial arrangements. He watched the powers of Nature, he recalled the surgeon to the path of physic, he showed to him the effect of local disorders upon the constitution, and the reciprocal operation of constitutional disorders upon local diseases; he pointed out that the digestive organs may be affected by local disorder, and that upon the due functioning of these organs the health of man mainly depends. His object was to excite, by means of medicine, a more copious and healthy secretion.... To the knowledge of the necessity of great attention to the excretions, may chiefly be attributed the increased longevity of man, and his freedom from many of the diseases of former days.

Mr. Abernethy’s mode of pursuing his mercurial course [calomel and blue pill] was cautious and regular. He prescribed only small doses, taking care that the error so often fallen into, of increasing the quantity, when any benefit was perceptible, should be avoided.

His death occurred in 1831.

James Douglass, who was born in Scotland in 1675, died in London in 1742. During his residence in the English metropolis he practiced midwifery and taught anatomy. He was one of those exceptional men (like John Hunter, for example) who were able both to practice the art of medicine and to do a great deal of research work. Among other things he interested himself in the history of medicine and also took high rank as a botanist. The following list of the titles of some of his more important contributions to medical literature illustrate his great versatility:—“Myographiae comparatae Specimen,” or “a comparative description of all the muscles in a man and in a quadruped,” London, 1707; “Description of an Instrument for Extracting Teeth,” in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. V.; “History of the Lateral Operation for Extracting the Stone by making a Wound near the Great Protuberance of the Os Ischii,” London, 1726; “A Description of the Peritonaeum and of that part of the membrana cellularis which lies on its outside, with an account of the true situation of the abdominal viscera,” London, 1730; “Appendix to the History of the Lateral Operation for the Stone,” London, 1731.

John Douglass, a younger brother of the preceding, also became celebrated as a surgeon. He lived in London, was connected with the Westminster Hospital, and attained special distinction through his having revived—after the lapse of nearly two centuries—the suprapubic operation for stone in the bladder (Pierre Franco’s “haut appareil”). His first operation of this nature was performed in 1719. John Douglass died in 1759.

His best-known published treatise bears the title: “Lithotomia Douglassiana,” or a “New Method,” etc., London, 1719.