Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/564

 he continued to be the most prominent and influential member for the rest of his life.

Outside the university Turner played a prominent part in matters concerning the general welfare of the medical profession. He was especially active in the long controversy over the improvement of the conditions to be imposed as a qualification for professional practice. Reform was urgently needed, especially in England, but there was an acute conflict as to the direction which this reform should take. The favourite proposal of English reformers was the creation of a central examining board, with the exclusive power of conferring the licence to practise in the United Kingdom. This scheme found a powerful supporter in Robert Lowe (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke), who sat in parliament for London University and took as his model that university's system of external examination. Against this formidable champion Turner entered the lists as the advocate of the university's privilege of conferring a licence through its degree, of the higher training given by a university as opposed to the mere cramming of knowledge for examination purposes, and of the superiority of examinations in which the teachers had a share. In 1881 he was invited by Earl Spencer to sit on a royal commission which was appointed to consider the whole matter. The majority reported in favour of the single portal to the profession; but Turner, with characteristic courage, drew up a vigorous minority report in which he defended his views. An attempt to legislate on the lines of the majority report proved a failure; and the Act of 1886, which finally settled the controversy, was a virtual victory for Turner's contentions. On the General Medical Council, created in 1858 to supervise the medical register and professional education, Turner sat from 1873 to 1883 as representative of the universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. When the council was re-constituted in 1886, and each university obtained separate representation, Turner again took a seat for the university of Edinburgh and retained it till his resignation in 1905. From 1898 to 1904 he was president of the council, the first Scottish representative to hold that office.

Turner had now become a man of considerable mark. He was knighted in 1886, and received many further distinctions in subsequent years. In 1897 his friends and former pupils subscribed to present to him his portrait, which was painted by Sir George Reid, president of the Royal Scottish Academy.

In 1903, on the retirement of Sir William Muir [q.v.], the curators offered Turner the principalship of the University, to which his long services had given him a substantial claim. He accepted the offer without any misgivings, but his confidence was not shared by all his colleagues. No Englishman and no occupant of a medical chair, had previously risen to the headship of a Scottish university. Turner was over seventy years of age, and he had identified himself so completely with medical interests as to inspire a fear that the other studies of the university might suffer if more weight was thrown on to the side of a faculty which was already, to some minds, too apt to assume that the university revolved around itself. But Turner, as in his younger days, speedily disarmed his critics. His English birth was already almost forgotten, as it was discovered that in all essential qualities he was as Scottish as any native of the country. His fellow-citizens recognized his virtual naturalization by conferring upon him the freedom of the city of Edinburgh in 1908. His years he carried lightly, and to the end there was no failing of his mental powers, and very little of his physical energy. Above all he showed himself to be no one-sided specialist. He had always been a man of wide general interests, and he had cultivated these by reading and by travel. But it was a remarkable achievement that he succeeded, at an age when most men are content with what they have already learned, in mastering the business and in appreciating the needs of all departments of the university. It was a recognition of the fairness and impartiality of his administration that steps were taken in 1912, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, to obtain his portrait as a permanent possession for the university. This, as he liked to point out, was again painted by a president of the Royal Scottish Academy, Sir James Guthrie.

The thirteen years of Turner's principalship, or at any rate the first eleven of them, were a notable period of expansion in the activities of the university. This expansion was rendered possible by the foundation of the Scottish Universities Trust by Andrew Carnegie [q.v.], with the administration of which Turner was closely associated, and by a benefaction from Sir Donald Currie [q.v.] due entirely to his regard for Turner. For the material 538