Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/764

746. Like several distinguished Englishmen of the present day, among whom are to be named Mr. John Stuart Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Carpenter's subsequent achievements cannot be traced to the training received at any of the public schools; since his early instruction was carried on entirely under his father's roof. Besides the ordinary branches of an English lad's education, he devoted himself to physics and chemistry, for which he already showed a special taste and aptitude. His wish was to become a civil engineer, but, no suitable opening presenting itself at this time in that profession, he yielded to the desire of his family that he should study medicine. Mr. J. B. Estlin, a general practitioner of high standing in Bristol, and brother-in-law of Dr. Pritchard the ethnologist, having offered to take him as a pupil and apprentice to the medical profession, an engagement to this effect was entered into. This was in 1828. Besides receiving private instructions, Mr. Carpenter attended lectures at the Bristol Medical School, and at the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Institution, and had hospital practice at the Bristol Infirmary. In the winter of 1832, the state of Mr. Estlin's health rendering it desirable that he should make a voyage to the West Indies, Mr. Carpenter accompanied him to St. Vincent, where he stayed several months, and also visited the island of Grenada.

On his return to Bristol, Mr. Carpenter resumed his medical studies and practice. In 1834 he went to London, where he prosecuted his studies at University College and Middlesex Hospital. It was at this time, while attending the lectures of Dr. Grant on Comparative Anatomy, that he imbibed that special love for the subject which has resulted in the production of those volumes on Physiology by which he is most generally known. Having passed his examination at the College of Surgeons and the Apothecaries' Hall, he went in 1835 to Edinburgh, where he devoted himself to professional studies, under the able guidance of the distinguished men who at that time upheld the fame of Edinburgh University as one of the first medical schools in Europe. While here, he was elected the first of the four annual presidents of the Royal Medical Society.

After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, Mr. Carpenter accepted the lectureship on Medical Jurisprudence in the Bristol Medical School, and at the same time commenced general practice in Bristol, intending to devote what spare time he might have to scientific pursuits. About this time he became a frequent contributor to various periodicals. Among the first of these contributions was a paper, "On the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings," published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. In the British and Foreign Medical Review, of which he eventually became the editor, his papers are remarkable alike for number and for varied contents. The first, which appeared in the July number of 1837, was on "Vegetable Physiology." This was succeeded in the following year by a