"Utiliumque sagax rerum."
Hor.
In estimating the practical penetration and clear judgment of Abernethy, it was almost necessary to see him placed by the side of other men.
His mind was so quick at perceiving the difficulties which lay around any subject, that it appeared to radiate on the most difficult, a luminosity that made it comparatively easy, by at least putting that which, to ordinary minds, might have been a confused puzzle, into the shape of an easy, definite, and intelligible proposition.
It was immaterial whether the difficulties were such as could be overcome, or whether they were in part insurmountable; both were clearly placed before you; and whilst the work of the quickest mind was facilitated, the slowest had the great assistance of seeing clearly what it had to do.
All this was done by Abernethy in a manner so little suggestive of effort, that, like his lecturing, it was so apparently easy, that one wondered how it happened that nobody could ever do it so well.
But when we saw him placed in juxtaposition with other men, these peculiarities, which, from the easy manner in which they were exhibited, we had perhaps estimated but lightly, were thrown into high relief, and by contrast showed the superiority of his powers.
The second series of Essays he had dedicated to his old master, Sir Charles Blicke. The third, the subject of our present consideration, he inscribed to his early instructor in anatomy, Sir W. Blizard. The dedication is straightforward and grateful.
The first paper of the series is interesting in two points of view. First, it was an important improvement in the management of a difficult form of a very serious class of accidents—"Injuries of the Head;" and secondly, it derives a peculiar interest from the parallelism it suggests between Abernethy and one of the most distinguished surgeons of France, the celebrated Pierre Joseph Desault—a parallelism honourable to both, yet remarkably instructive as to the superior discriminative powers of Abernethy. Desault's pupil, Bichat, himself one of the most accomplished anatomists of his time, has left an eloquent eulogium on Desault, which, although somewhat florid, is by no means above his merits. He says he was the father of Surgical Anatomy in France; and certainly few men evinced more sagacity, in that immediate application of a fact to practical purposes which constitutes art, than Desault.