Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/544

 man, whose merits he knew how to appreciate amidst the eccentricity by which they were surrounded. In May, 1817, he became a member of the College of Surgeons, and, not content with the superficial manner in which medicine was, at that time, taught in London, went to Edinburgh, in the autumn of the same year, to study physic under the celebrated masters who then lectured in the college of that city.

There is many a reader of this tribute to Dr. Darwall's memory, to whom the allusion to the pleasure a youth, so disposed, would experience on first going to Edinburgh, will recall emotions of a very agreeable kind. To a young medical student, anxious to become accomplished in his profession, and expecting its highest honours as the reward of some years of delightful study, the approach to Edinburgh, where, not to mention other honoured names, Gregory then taught in the chair of physic, Monro and Barclay lectured on anatomy, and Gordon on physiology, was an æra never, amidst future cares and changes, to be forgotten. Nor did experience reflect any shade of disappointment on such feelings. The admirable lectures, to the hearing of which the college bell daily awoke the student, who arose from no distempered couch by dissipation fevered; the excellent instruction to be daily gained in the clinical wards of the infirmary; the studious zeal which seemed to pervade the whole University; the animating discussions carried on in the medical society, where were laid the foundations of blessed friendships; these are things which must ever form the most cherished portion of an Edinburgh student's