"When I was a boy," said he, "I half ruined myself in buying oranges and other things, to ascertain the effects of different kinds of diet in this disease."
The same researches show how early also he began to perceive the importance of chemistry in investigating the functions of different organs, and in aiding, generally, physiological researches. We have heard a contemporary and a lecturer on chemistry attest Abernethy's proficiency in that science. As his investigations proceeded, he had the still higher merit of taking just and sober views of the relations of chemistry to physiological science.
We mean that whilst he fully recognized the importance of it, he entirely avoided that exclusive reliance on it which is too often created by some of the more striking demonstrations of chemical science; that one—idea—tendency, which unconsciously wrests it to the solution of phenomena which, in the present state of our knowledge, it is wholly inadequate to explain. We have alluded to the foregoing facts touching the impressions derived from his apprenticeship, and his early disposition for philosophical research, because both will be found to have relations to his subsequent labours and peculiarities. Diligent as he was, we suspect he found, during his apprenticeship, little of those attractions which make labour and industry sources of happiness and pleasure.
As a matter of course, he would have been allowed to attend any lectures which were given at the hospital to which Sir Charles Blicke was surgeon (St. Bartholomew's), and this would bring him in contact with Mr. Pott, who delivered a certain number of surgical lectures there.
There were no courses of anatomical lectures given at St. Bartholomew's at that period; but anatomical lectures were delivered regularly at the London Hospital, by Dr. Maclaurin and Sir William Blizard, and afterwards by Sir William Blizard alone. As Sir Charles Blicke lived in Mildred's Court and subsequently in Billiter Square, Abernethy would be about equidistant from the two hospitals, both of which he attended. We incline to think that it was in attending these lectures, and perhaps especially those of Sir William Blizard, that he first found those awakening impulses which excited in him a real love for his profession.
It was about this time, we think, that he began to have more enlarged ideas of the nature and objects of surgical science; a state of mind calculated to enable him to thoroughly understand and appreciate Mr. Hunter, and to deduce from the principles which he was shadowing forth, those relations and consequences which we shall endeavour popularly to explain; principles which, though originally directed to the treatment of so-called surgical maladies, were found equally to affect the practice of medicine.
[11] "How happens it, Mæcenas, that no one is content with his condition, whether reason gave it him, or chance threw it in his way?"
[12] The assistant-surgeons at that period having no in-patients under their care, except in the absence, or by permission, of their chiefs.
[13] A public journalist was inclined to give this anecdote to another person. We then stated that we had it on the authority of a gentleman who was present. Such power of memory, though rare, is not singular; other examples have fallen within our own observation.