Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/572

 any accident he had not obtained it on this melancholy vacancy occurring, the disappointment would, assuredly, have very deeply affected him. But he had now passed eleven years at Birmingham, as a physician; his character was highly respected; and the confidence of the profession, and of the public, in his professional skill, was daily increasing. His friends were so numerous that, when the day of election came, the other candidates had withdrawn, and in a manner not a little gratifying to him. He had always been very sensible of the difficulty with which a physician, not attached to an hospital, can do much to improve medical knowledge, or even gain useful experience; and he was not insensible to the advantages which the appointment would reflect on his private practice, which, from this time, rapidly increased. The governors of the hospital never had a medical officer more desirous of efficiently performing his duties; and he shewed the interest he took in the advancement of the pupils, by immediately instituting clinical lectures; thus adding to his own labours, at a period when his time was daily becoming more valuable to him. His patience in investigating a disease was only exceeded by his perspicacity in detecting it, and his anxiety to cure it. He was of opinion (for the subject was often entertained by us) that the therapeutic part of medicine, and the distinction of diseases by symptoms, had, of late years, been too much neglected by many who were most sanguine in their views of the value of morbid anatomy; and whilst he never omitted an opportunity of enlarging his knowledge of the products of disease, his first anxiety always