Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/860

836 he was elected assistant physician to the Hospital for Diseases of the Chest at Brompton; was for many years consulting physician to the Seamen's Hospital at Greenwich, and to the Royal Hospital for Consumptives at Ventnor. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1846, a fellow in 1851, and was at different times member of its council and censor, Lumleian lecturer, senior censor, Harveian orator, and vice-president. From 1864 till his death he was one of the most conspicuous members of the General Medical Council, having been appointed crown member seven times, serving as chairman of some of its most important committees, and having been president of the council since 1891, He was one of the founders of the Pathological Society, an early secretary of it, and a frequent exhibitor at its meetings. While exceptionally popular and successful as a practitioner in medicine, a favorite in society, and a recognized authority on tuberculosis and diseases of the heart, Quain, his biographer in Nature says, "was closely set on the public work associated with medicine. Medical education, medical research, medical relief at hospitals—these were the subjects at which he mainly worked, and with an energy and avidity which appeared to grow rather than wane as time passed, and he attained in his old age the highest positions in the profession. A senator of the University of London; chairman of the Brown Institution, with Burdon-Sanderson, Klein, Greenfield, Horsley, and their equally distinguished successors working as professors there; one of the most prominent fellows of the College of Physicians, which was passing through a critical period of its history; and, finally, president of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration, of which he had been for thirty years a member—Quain had his hands full; yet he never appeared to grudge his time to a friend in want of advice; and he was always keen and ready for the latest information in science."

Probably Quain's greatest service to knowledge and to the general welfare was rendered in connection with the investigations of the royal commission to inquire into the nature, causes, and methods of prevention of the cattle plague, to which he was appointed in 1865, in association with Lord Spencer (chairman), the present prime minister, then Lord Cranbourne, Lord Sherbrooke, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Dr. Edmund Parkes, and Dr. Henry Bence Jones. "In the valuable transactions of this royal commission," the Lancet says, "Quain took a very prominent and useful part; in fact, for several months the question occupied almost his whole time. The whole matter was gone into most extensively by the commission, and not the least searching among the frequent questions were those addressed by Dr. Quain to the various veterinary and