Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/148

 amount of rest to sustain him under the labors performed for many years of his busy life.

Dr. Bell remarks that “Dr. Physick’s impressiveness as a lecturer arose from his entire mastery of his subject, which he was careful never to magnify beyond its due proportions, and hence he always kept it within his grasp. The same thoughts and inculcations might have been uttered in a more masculine, certainly in a more ornamental style, compatibly with good taste, but it is not certain that the essence itself would have been productive of a stronger sensation, or been longer remembered by its being blended with these pleasant adjuvants.”

Much comment has been indulged in with respect to the expediency of the step taken by Dr. Physick in acceding to the transfer of himself from the Chair of Surgery to that of Anatomy in 1819. The feeling at the time, and subsequently, was that a descent had been made from a position in which he was facile princeps to one where his eminent knowledge and skill were lost, and which might have been filled with equal, if not even greater efficiency by another individual. In any position, Dr. Physick was capable of commanding respect; his dignified bearing and imposing presence, his emphatic manner and painstaking execution of his duties, deeply impressed his pupils, and commanded the profoundest deference. We know from personal experience that the portions of the course of anatomy delivered by him were listened to with earnest attention; and the writer well recollects the last lecture delivered by this eminent man, at the conclusion of the course of 1830. It was upon the blood; a subject upon which he had experimented with Hunter. With the manuscript before him he descanted minutely upon all the points connected with the subject, and, with the interest almost of an enthusiast, performed the experiments. In this lecture he digressed to comment, in terms and with gestures eloquent from their force alone, upon the practice of vivisections, which to his sensitive feelings had always been repugnant, and earnestly to discourage their performance. It was the honest outbreak of his soul in public, accompanied by a flash of emotion which vividly affected the minds of all who heard him.

The health of Dr. Physick did not permit him to assume the entire labor and fatigue of instruction, and during the period