Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/547

 he read, in 1820, to the Medical Society, as well as for his Thesis De Morbis Artificum. It is to be remarked, that he seldom wholly abandoned any subject to which his attention had once been particularly directed. With the help of his private papers, and of his published works, we may trace this subject from his first detached observations, made when visiting different manufactories, to his essay before the Medical Society, in 1820, then to his Thesis, in 1821; from thence to his, papers in the Medical Repository, in 1825; and, lastly, to the well-considered article on the Diseases of Artisans, which he contributed to the 1st volume of the Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine, in the last year of his life. Whilst no subject connected with health and disease seems to have escaped his attention, he was not unobservant of the wonders of machinery by which he was often surrounded in the scene of his observations, and on these and on different manufactures, he was in the habit of making occasional memoranda.

On Dr. Darwall's return from Edinburgh, in 1818, after passing one winter there, he became the assistant of Mr. Freer, whose health was declining; and, up to this time, it seems to have been the wish of his friends that he should practice surgery in Birmingham. His Edinburgh studies had suggested a different course to him, and other circumstances favouring his design, he returned, in the following year, (1819) to Edinburgh, with a determination to study for a doctor's degree. It is easy for those who knew him, to imagine that this intervening year, passed in surgical practice, was borne somewhat impatiently by one so capable of further enjoying