With hope the gloomy hour can cheer,
And temper happiness with fear."
When we look abroad amongst mankind—nay, even in the contracted sphere of our own experience—it is interesting to observe the varied current of human life in different cases. In some, from the cradle to the grave, life has been beset with difficulties; it has been a continued struggle; the breath seems to have been first drawn, and finally yielded up, amidst the multifarious oppositions and agitations of adversity. In other instances, life seems like an easy, smoothly gliding stream, gently bearing Man on to what had appeared to be the haven of his wishes; and the little voyage has been begun and completed without the appearance of a ripple. All varieties are, no doubt, the result of constantly operating laws. Of these, many are probably inscrutable by us; many more, no doubt, escape our observation. The unforeseen nature of many events confers the character of mystery on any attempt at foresight; yet, when we take a careful retrospect of a life, it is curious to observe how naturally the secondary causes appear to have produced the results by which they were followed; but which, beforehand, no one had thought of predicting.
Varied, however, as is the course of human life, few men have arrived at eminence without difficulty. We do not mean that ephemeral prominence of "position" which makes them marked in their day; but that which leaves the impression of their minds on the age in which they lived, or on the science or other pursuit which they had chosen—original minds, who have enlarged the boundaries of our knowledge. Such men usually have the ample gifts of nature with which they are endowed, somewhat counterbalanced by the difficulty experienced in the successful application of them.
Abernethy had not been altogether exempt from such difficulties. With a sensitive organization, he had had to make his own way; he had experienced the difficulties which attend the advocacy of opinions and principles which were opposed to, or at all events different from, those generally entertained. He had had to encounter that misconstruction, misrepresentation, ridicule, even malice—save the mark!—which are too frequently provoked by any attempts to tell people that there is something more correct than the notions which they have been accustomed to value. Still, when we compare Abernethy's course with that of many—we had almost said most—benefactors to science, he might be said to have been a fortunate man. If a man has power, and a "place to stand on"—and Abernethy had both—truth will tell at last.
A retired spot, a room in an obscure street, near St. Bartholomew's, had been by his unaided talents expanded into a theatre within the walls of the hospital. This was becoming again crowded; and, although it formed a satisfactory arena for the development and illustration of his principles, the increasing audiences were significant of the coming necessity of a still larger building; which was, in fact, a few years afterwards, constructed. He had indeed arrived, as we imagine, at a point which was comparatively smooth water, and which we are inclined to regard as the zenith of his career.
In the opening of his beautiful lectures at the College, Abernethy, in one of his warm and earnest endeavours to animate his audience to regard benevolence, and the love of truth, as the impulses which could alone urge on, and sustain, industry in cultivating the "Science" of our profession, had observed that, "unfortunately, a man might attain to a considerable share of public reputation without being a real student of his profession." There have been indeed too many examples of that, as also of those who, after years of labour, have failed to obtain a scanty living.
Abernethy had been a real and laborious student in science, and he was now reaping an abundant and well-deserved fruition. Few surgeons have arrived at a position so calculated to satisfy the most exacting ambition. Although the full extent and bearing of his principles were by no means universally understood, yet the general importance of them was so, and in some measure appreciated. In a greater or less degree, they were answering the tests afforded by the bedside in all parts of the world.
Ample, therefore, as might be the harvest he was reaping in a large practice, he was enjoying a still higher fruition in the kind of estimation in which he was held. He had a high reputation with the public; one still higher amongst men of science. His crowded waiting-room was a satisfactory evidence of the one, and the manner in which his name was received here, on the Continent, and in America, a gratifying testimony of the other. He was regarded much more in the light of a man of enlarged mind—a medical philosopher—than merely as a distinguished surgeon.
From the very small beginnings left by Mr. Pott, he had raised the school of St. Bartholomew's to an eminence never before attained by any school in this country. I think I may say that, in its peculiar character, it was at that time (1816) unrivalled.