Page:The Medical School of the Melbourne University - an address delivered on the twenty fifth anniversary of the opening of the Medical School, in the Wilson Hall, March 23, 1887 (IA b22293346).pdf/8

8 dying at Cannes in January 1879, was succeeded by Dr. Jamieson. My own department is the only one which has undergone no change, and only I and Professor Halford remain of those originally appointed. The latest addition to the staff is that of Professor Spencer, who has just arrived from England, to take the newly created chair of Biology.

It is meet that, in speaking of those others who have died, I should say something of Dr. Martin and Professor Kirkland, who, although not on the first list of those appointed as teachers in the School, took their places as vacancies were made by the death of those already mentioned.

Dr. Martin, the second of the Lecturers on Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, had earned a good place in the profession in this colony, by some years of the hardest of hard work, namely, that of a "Club Doctor." In this way, he had acquired a very large midwifery practice, and, unlike not a few who content themselves with practical knowledge only, he had kept good pace with the progress continually made in gynaecological science, so that when, on the death of Dr. Turnbull, he was elected a member of the honorary staff of the Lying-in Hospital, it was confessed that the choice had been a judicious one. Somewhat later, when Dr. Tracy went to Europe, in 1873, to seek for that restoration to health he was destined never to find, Dr. Martin was properly considered the best man temporarily to take the vacant place, and it was a thing of course, therefore, that, when Dr. Tracy died in November 1874, Dr. Martin should be confirmed in the appointment. He made an excellent teacher, for he was full of information, and had a felicitous way of communicating to others what he himself knew. His own death, on the 19th of January, 1879, at Cannes, whither he had gone in the hope of recruiting the powers which a too laborious occupation had permanently undermined, was a source of regret to the whole profession, who, very properly, regarded the event as a deplorable calamity.

Professor Kirkland's career in the University was a somewhat remarkable one. He was for some years the assistant of Dr. Macadam, and when, on the death of this latter gentleman, he was appointed his successor, he felt the disadvantage of being unpossessed of any medical qualification. It is to his infinite