To give briefly a few of the more notable dates in Holland’s life, he married first, in 1822, a Miss Caldwell, who died in 1830, leaving two sons, the present Sir Henry Holland and the Rev. F. J. Holland; and secondly, in 1834, Saba, daughter of Sydney Smith. He was made Physician-Extraordinary to the Queen in 1837; Physician-in-Ordinary to the Prince-Consort in 1840; was offered, but declined, a baronetcy by Lord Melbourne in 1841; was made Physician-in-Ordinary to the Queen in 1852, and accepted a baronetcy in 1853. In later years he withdrew altogether from practice, but continued active in society and persevering in travel. In his last journey, to Russia, he was accompanied by his son, the Rev. F. J. Holland; on his way back he attended the trial of Marshal Bazaine at Versailles on the 24th October 1873, dined the same day at the British Embassy, returned to London the next day, did not go out on Sunday the 26th, and died quietly in bed on the 27th, on the 85th anniversary of his birth.

To this extraordinary age lived the man who had been seen in all climates, in the Arctic Circle or in the Tropics, on the Prairies or the Pyramids, in the same black dress coat in which he almost ran from house to house at home. Sydney Smith said of him that he started off for two months at a time with a box of pills in one pocket and a clean shirt in the other—occasionally forgetting the shirt. Let Sir Henry tell his own tale of his enjoyment. “The Danube I have followed, with scarcely an interruption, from its assumed sources at Donau-Eschingen to the Black Sea—the Rhine, now become so familiar to common travel, from the infant stream in the Alps. The St. Lawrence I have pursued uninterruptedly for nearly two thousand miles of its lake and river course. The waters of the Upper Mississippi I have recently navigated for some hundred miles below the falls of St. Anthony. The Ohio, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Connecticut rivers I have followed far towards their sources; and the Ottawa, grand in its scenery of waterfalls, lakes, forests, and mountain gorges, for three hundred miles above Montreal. There has been pleasure to me also in touching upon some single point of a river, and watching the flow of waters which come from unknown springs or find their issue in some remote ocean or sea. I have felt this on the Nile at its time of highest inundation, in crossing the Volga when scarcely wider than the Thames at Oxford, and still more when near the sources of the streams that feed the Euphrates, south of Trebizond.” Altogether Sir Henry estimated that he had spent twelve years of his life in foreign travel.

Literary work was a pastime with Holland, and both in the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews he delighted to show his extensive reading, and his enlightened yet very unrevolutionary views. His more interesting reviews have been published as “Scientific Essays,” and “Chapters on Mental Physiology;” while his “Medical Notes and Reflections” constitutes almost all his practical contribution to medical science. Interesting “Fragmentary Papers” were published posthumously. In the “Medical Notes” certain current questions were philosophically discussed in a most pleasing style, and some questions of practice treated with some originality if not with boldness. Two chapters may be especially alluded to as valuable, namely, those “On the Abuse of Purgative Medicines,” and “On Bleeding in Affections of the Brain.” Many of his chapters on Mental Physiology show wide observation and kindly insight into the relations of mind and body. But after all it is by his “Recollections of Past Life” that Holland will be most known, his sketches of the leading personages, politicians, wits, and scientific and literary men having a charming vividness and truthfulness about them, making every one regret that so many limitations were imposed by the author upon himself when he might have easily furnished so much more material for history.

Holland was of the middle height, spare in appearance, but very active; with a countenance not indicative of the highest mental power.

[CHAPTER XIV.]
SIR WILLIAM FERGUSSON AND CONSERVATIVE SURGERY.

The association of the word “conservative” with operative surgery, so strongly identified in the popular mind with the removal of portions of the body, needs some explanation to the non-professional reader. In former times inflammation with denudation of bone was commonly believed to necessitate amputation; and diseased joints, especially the elbow, knee and ankle, with ulceration of cartilages, were generally considered incurable, except by removal of the limb. As Fergusson said, the ways of surgery get grooved; they are hallowed in the estimation of some. The man who steps from the groove is held to be rash and is called to account. How much this was the case will be seen by the reception accorded to conservative surgery, which aspired to do away with many of the radical proceedings of the past.

The term “conservative surgery,” as first used by Sir W. Fergusson in 1852, meant operations for the preservation of some part of the body, which would otherwise have been unnecessarily sacrificed. A smaller and more limited operation was undertaken to remove simply the incurably disorganised portion of the body, such as a diseased joint, and not an entire limb. Thus Fergusson said, “a compromise may be made, whereby the original constitution and frame, as from the Maker’s hand, may be kept as nearly as possible in its normal state of integrity.” “No one can more thoroughly appreciate a well-performed amputation than I do, but I certainly appreciate more highly the operation which sets aside the necessity for that mutilation.”

Two great surgeons thus bear testimony to Fergusson: “The improvements which he introduced in lithotrity and in the cure of cleft-palate may almost be considered typical,” says Sir Spencer Wells,[3] “of the school of modern conservative surgery, and will long be acknowledged as triumphs of British surgery in the reign of Victoria.” He was, in the words of Sir James Paget, “the greatest master of the art, the greatest practical surgeon of our time.”

William Fergusson was born on March 20th, 1808, at Prestonpans, East Lothian, and was educated first at Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire and afterwards at the High School of Edinburgh. At fifteen he entered a lawyer’s office, by his own desire, but soon found that law did not suit him, and at seventeen exchanged law for medicine, which profession his father had wished him to adopt. He was early attracted by the teaching of Robert Knox, the celebrated anatomist, who quickly discerned the stuff his pupil was made of. Fergusson would often spend from twelve to sixteen hours a day in the dissecting-room. One of his dissections of the nerves of the face, preserved in the museum of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons, remains an admirable example of manipulative skill and dexterity, and the stand on which it is placed is also a specimen of his work. At twenty Knox made him demonstrator to his class, which then numbered four hundred. He had previously assisted John Turner, Professor of Surgery at the College of Surgeons. At the early age of twenty-one Fergusson became Fellow of the College of Surgeons by examination. Knox then promoted him to a share in his lectures on general anatomy, and the young lecturer also gave demonstrations on surgical anatomy, which proved highly valuable. He soon began to manifest his skill in operative surgery, and in 1831 he was elected surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Dispensary, and showed his boldness by performing the important operation of tying the subclavian artery, which as yet had only been twice done in Scotland. In 1833 he married Miss Ranken, heiress of the estate of Spittlehaugh in Peeblesshire. This marriage, while it placed him beyond pecuniary difficulty, had no effect in diminishing his industry. In 1839 he became surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and already shared the highest surgical practice with Syme. In fact there was hardly room for two such men in Edinburgh. Liston had betaken himself to London. In 1840 Fergusson followed his example, accepting an invitation to King’s College, which was now establishing its hospital. At a farewell presentation, Lizars said that he had seen no one, not even Liston himself, surpass Fergusson in the most trying and critical operations. The man of whom this could be said at the age of thirty-two had every chance of success in London, even though he came thither with scarcely any personal friends to back him. Professor Partridge, his old friend, gave him a cordial introduction, and he established himself in Dover Street, Piccadilly, only to find that his first year’s private practice did not exceed £100. Yet it cannot be denied that Fergusson came to London at a fortunate period. Within a few years death or retirement withdrew from practice many of the most capable operators, such as Liston, Aston Key, and Astley Cooper. Thus his success was really rapid, for his third year brought him £1000, and in 1847 he removed to a large house in George Street, Hanover Square. His style of operating soon attracted general attention both among students and practitioners, and King’s College operating theatre became the resort of all the medical students and practitioners who could cram into it.