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

by G. T. Bettany

Lawrence took occasion, in his first lectures in 1816, to criticise Abernethy’s exposition of Hunter’s theory of life, and to unfold views which seriously scandalised those who regarded life as a mysterious entity entirely separate from and above the material organism with which it is associated. These views were criticised by Abernethy in his “Physiological Lectures” in 1817, and Lawrence replied in 1818, in terms of sarcasm which made a serious breach between the master and his former pupil. Lawrence’s lectures were published as “An Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology,” 1816, and “Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man,” 1819. Having been accused by Abernethy and others “of perverting the honourable office intrusted to him, by the College of Surgeons, to the very unworthy design of propagating opinions detrimental to society, and of endeavouring to enforce them for the purpose of loosening those restraints on which the welfare of mankind depends,” he used his eloquence unsparingly both to defend his position, and to repel the attacks made upon him. He was not more heretical than many of his predecessors, nor than a great many enlightened biologists of the present day. He regarded life as “the assemblage of all the functions, and the general result of their exercise. Thus organisation, vital properties, functions and life, are expressions related to each other; in which organisation is the instrument, vital properties the acting power, function the mode of action, and life the result.” Again, “we find that the motion proper to living bodies, or in one word, Life, has its origin in that of their parents. From their parents they have received the vital impulse, and hence it is evident, that in the present state of things, life proceeds only from life; and there exists no other but that which has been transmitted from one living body to another by an uninterrupted succession.”

Lawrence was virulently attacked, and his name associated with Tom Paine and Lord Byron as arch-heretics. A pamphlet of the year 1820 has the following title: “The Radical Triumvirate; or, Infidel Paine, Lord Byron, and Surgeon Lawrence colleaguing with the Patriotic Radicals to emancipate Mankind from all laws Human and Divine, with a plate engraved for their instruction: a Letter to John Bull from an Oxonian resident in London.” The Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge, the Rev. Thomas Rennell, among others, took up the task of controverting Lawrence’s supposed materialism. The lectures on the comparative anatomy of man certainly put forward in a striking light many of Blumenbach’s views, and showed that the literal accuracy of the early parts of Genesis was inconsistent with the facts of zoology and comparative anatomy. We might proceed further on this subject, but Lawrence himself prevented his successors from espousing his personal cause with ardour, for, being called upon to resign his position at Bridewell and Bethlehem, “he did not resign, but recanted; bought up all the copies of his work ‘On the History of Man,’ and sent them over to America.”[22] Numerous modified and also spurious editions were sold. This conduct deprives him of a large share of our sympathy and respect. Had Lawrence, like Darwin or Huxley, maintained his opinions when most unpopular, he might have won a victory for sound science years before it actually was gained. If he had been the original discoverer of the truths he enunciated, and had bought them with his life’s energy, he would scarcely have dropped them at the raging of a storm. But the glory was not to be his. He was tried in the balance and found wanting.

The early symptoms of disagreement between Abernethy and Lawrence extended to other members of the staff, and led to the establishment of the Aldersgate Street School of Medicine, where Lawrence lectured on surgery till 1828, when he succeeded to Abernethy’s lectures on surgery at St. Bartholomew’s. The Aldersgate School included able teachers, such as Tweedie, Clutterbuck, Roget, Tyrrell, and Davis, and had much success. Lawrence’s connection with the Eye Infirmary led him to become an authority on the surgery of the eye. He published in 1830 a treatise on the venereal diseases of the eye, in 1833 a treatise on diseases of the eye, besides other papers on this branch of practice. Late in life he published, in 1863, his valuable “Lectures on Surgery.” His smaller works and papers are too numerous to mention.

As a student, Sir Benjamin Brodie describes William Lawrence as already remarkable for his great powers of acquirement, his industrious habits, and his immense stores of information. In later life he characterised him as possessed of considerable powers of conversation, abounding in happy illustrations and not ill-natured sarcasm. “In public speaking,” says Brodie, “he is collected, has great command of language, and uses it correctly. In writing, his style is pure, free from all affectation, yet in general not sufficiently concise.... That he is thoroughly acquainted with his profession cannot be doubted.” But Sir Benjamin does not attribute to him so much originality as erudition and industry.

It is in his relations to medical politics that the conduct of William Lawrence is most open to question. When the College of Surgeons was a close corporation, he put himself at the head of a great agitation to liberalise it. An eloquent speech at the Freemasons’ Tavern in 1826 was one of the marked features of the campaign, in which he joined heartily with the Lancet in attacking the old-world system of the College. “But,” says the Lancet, “the Council feared him, and elected him into their body. From that moment Mr. Lawrence became a conservative and an obstructive, and maintained that character to the close of his life. He not only deserted his former friends, but lost no opportunity of reviling them.... Mr. Lawrence, during the long period that he was a member of the Council, and of the Court of Examiners, resolutely and consistently opposed every attempt that was made to improve the education and the status of the surgeon in general practice.”

Lawrence was twice President of the College, and more than once delivered the Hunterian Oration. On the last of these occasions, in 1846, when a new charter had lately been obtained which failed to gratify the just aspirations of the members of the College, no one, it is said, could be persuaded to deliver the Hunterian Oration, till Lawrence, with characteristic polemic zeal, threw himself into the breach. A crowded audience, for the most part hostile, assembled; and Lawrence, instead of avoiding controversy, both defended and commended the action of the Council. A storm of indignation was excited, especially among those who had listened to his contrary deliverances twenty years before. But “the orator was imperturbable in the fiercest of the storm. He certainly displayed on that occasion his most extraordinary talents as an orator. When he had allowed his audience to exhaust their dissatisfaction at the sentiments which he had uttered, he concluded his address in a most masterly and eloquent peroration, which called forth the plaudits of the assembly.”

“In arriving at a just estimation of the character of Sir W. Lawrence, it must be admitted,” says the Lancet, “that in most of the higher qualities of the mind he was entitled to admiration. His talents were of the highest order, seldom surpassed in our profession. As a writer, his style was vigorous, clear, and convincing. As a lecturer, in manner, substance, and expression, he had no superior in the profession of our time, if we except Joseph Henry Green. As an operator, if not among the greatest, he is entitled to hold a high position. But it must be acknowledged that ‘his principles were somewhat lax, his heart was somewhat hard.’ We speak of him now merely in a public capacity, for in all the relations of private life he was most estimable and affectionate. Notwithstanding the low estimation in which he held surgeons in general practice, it is probable no pure surgeon of modern times ever had so large a general practice as himself. If they were only competent for the ‘common exigencies of surgery,’ he at all events thought himself able to treat every class of disease, whether medical or surgical.”

In physical frame Lawrence was well developed and vigorous, above middle height, with a high forehead, a cold but keen blue eye, a classic nose, a large expressive mouth, and a firm chin of some size. He was always somewhat liable to loss of nerve power in the face or in the lower limbs. In 1865 he began to become enfeebled, and finally hemiplegia supervened, and a second attack, at the Council Chamber of the College of Surgeons, laid him by completely. But he remained conscious till the last, dying on the 5th July 1867. A bust of him adorns the rooms of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and another is in the College of Surgeons. A baronetcy was only conferred on him in the March before his death. He had long been Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen, and finally Serjeant Surgeon. It has been said of him that he kept his appointments as long as possible; but it may be answered that he was full of vitality, and died in harness.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Lancet, July 13, 1867. It has been since shown that Lawrence had nothing to do with the American speculation.