Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/557

 regarded with sentiments of friendship not second to my own. “ It would ill become me, ” says Mr. Wickenden, “ to obtrude an opinion on the general or professional education of our late friend; but, perhaps, I may be excused a few remarks upon his conduct as a practitioner of the art, and as a progressive student in the science of medicine. On this subject I need not inform you that his views were most comprehensive; that he cultivated with extraordinary zeal, and recommended with great earnestness for diligent study, every branch of learning and science upon which the professional student could climb; deeply impressed with the conviction that upon every twig are to be found 'leaves for healing.' In the examination of patients, his enquiries were minute, and he availed himself of every means that he could acquire to correct or increase the power of the inlets to his mind. Thus, although he possessed no very superior sense of hearing or touch, by diligent attention he attained peculiar tact in distinguishing the various changes produced by disease in the chest and its contained organs, by means of the stethoscope and percussion. His botanical pursuits led him, likewise, to cultivate the use of the microscope, the wonderful power of which he delighted to develope, in the illustration of animal as well as vegetable structures. His mode of treating disease was cautious, but as far removed from timidity on the one hand, as from temerity on the other. Pathological investigation he held to be of primary importance, and it consequently obtained a large share of his attention: for this pursuit such was his