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  teachers in London to make auscultation, as introduced by Laennec, a part of regular instruction. His original views respecting the cause of the sounds of the heart, which have only partially been accepted, were first put forth in 1832. He restated them in the 'London Medical Gazette' (1840, xxvi. 64), and also in his 'Practical Observations on Diseases of the Lungs and Heart,' a work much less successful than the 'Principles of Medicine.' In all Billing's writings his avowed aim was to base medicine on pathology ; their most striking feature is clearness of thought, and a striving after logical accuracy which sometimes appears overstrained. Beginning as an innovator, he came in the end to be conservative, and was much opposed to what he regarded as the teachings of the German school. He took great interest in art, was himself a fair amateur artist, and a keen connoisseur in engraved gems, coins, and similar objects. On this subject he published an elaborate text-book, illustrated with photographs, which has reached a second edition. Billing was a man of great physical as well as mental activity, and was perhaps the last London physician who occasionally visited his patients on horseback. No portrait of him appears to have been published, except a very poor woodcut in the 'Medical Circular,' 1852.

He wrote (all published at London in 8vo): 1. 'First Principles of Medicine,' 1st ed. 1831 ; 6th ed. 1868. 2. 'On the Treatment of Asiatic Cholera,' 1st ed. 1848. 3. 'Practical Observations on Diseases of the Lungs and Heart,' 1852. 4. 'The Science of Gems, Jewels, Coins, and Medals, Ancient and Modern,' 1867. Also 'Clinical Lectures,' published in the 'Lancet,' 1831, and several papers, &c., in the medical journals.

[Medical Circular, 1852, i. 243; Medical Times and Gazette, i 881, ii. 373; Proceedings Royal Med. and Chirurg. Sec. 1882, ix. 129; Medical Directory, 1881 ; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iii. 203 ; Calendar of London Hospital.]

  BILLING, THOMAS (d. 1481?), chief justice, is said by Fuller (Worthies, ii. 166) to have been a native of Northamptonshire, where two villages near Northampton bear his name, and to have afterwards lived in state at Ashwell in that county. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chief Justices, i. 145) says he was an attorney's clerk; but this seems doubtful. He was, at any rate, a member of Gray's Inn. Writing to one Ledam, Billing says: ‘I would ye should do well, because ye are a fellow of Gray's Inn, where I was fellow’ (Paston Letters, i. 43, 53), and, according to a Gray's Inn manuscript, he was a reader there. His social position was sufficient to enable him to be on terms of intimacy with the families of Paston and of Lord Grey de Ruthin. In 1448 he was M.P. for London, and was made common serjeant 15 Oct. 1442, and recorder 21 Sept. 1450. He received the coif as serjeant-at-law 2 Jan. 1453–4, and in the Hilary term of that year is first mentioned as arguing at the bar. Thenceforward his name is frequent in the reports. Lord-chancellor Waynflete appointed him king's serjeant 21 April 1458, and Lord Campbell, citing an otherwise unknown pamphlet of Billing in favour of the Lancastrian cause, says that with the attorney-general and solicitor-general he argued the cause of King Henry VI at the bar of the House of Lords. The entry in the Parliamentary Rolls, however (v. 376), indicates that the judges and king's serjeants excused themselves from giving an opinion in the matter. About the same time Billing appears to have been knighted, and on the accession of Edward IV his patent of king's serjeant was renewed, and in the first parliament of this reign he was named, along with Serjeants Lyttelton and Laken, a referee in a cause between the Bishop of Winchester and some of his tenants. He is said by Lord Campbell to have exerted himself actively against King Henry, Queen Margaret, and the Lancastrians, and to have helped to frame the act of attainder of Sir John Fortescue, chief justice of the king's bench, for being engaged in the battle of Towton, and to have advised the grant of a pardon, on condition that the opinions of the treatise ‘De Laudibus’ should be retracted (see Rot. Parl. vi. 2629). At any rate, in 1464 (9 Aug.), Billing was added to the three judges of the king's bench, but by the king's writ only; and the question being thereupon raised, it was decided that a commission in addition to the writ was required for the appointment of a justice of assize. Baker in his ‘Chronology,’ and Hale in his ‘Pleas of the Crown,’ says that on the trial of Walter Walker for treason in 1460, for having said to his son, ‘Tom, if thou behavest thyself well, I will make thee heir to the Crown’—i.e. of the Crown Inn, of which he was landlord—Billing ruled a conviction, and Lord Campbell accepts the story. But it would seem from the report of the judgment of Chief-justice Bromley in the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, 17 April 1554, that the judge at that trial was John Markham [q. v.], afterwards chief justice next before Billing, and that he directed an acquittal (see, 415; , 633).

Billing succeeded Markham as chief justice of the king's bench 23 Jan. 1468–9 (