set his facility and adaptability; his readiness to continue what was approved by experience, or to depart radically from old and dull routine. On assuming his lectureship his instant resolve was to inculcate the doctrines of Hunter by which he meant the study of normal function and pathological change before going on to speak of diagnosis and treatment. At the outset he found himself in deep waters. The students of the day were not ready for that style of thing. The attendance, which was voluntary, immediately fell off; and he felt that his new plan was in some way at fault. At once he changed his method but not his purpose, and organized that form of combined didactic and clinical lecture which is still most popular in our schools. He has left us copious reports of his teaching, and to read these is still a novelty and a delight. His wide experience, his teeming notebooks, his varied collections, and his phenomenal memory combined to furnish a fascinating discourse; and his lectures, carefully planned and accurately carried out, supplied at once variety, anecdote, instruction, and conviction. His statements are short, sound, and lucid; his cases graphic and to the point.

As the years went by his material multiplied; at the age of thirty-two he was appointed surgeon to Guy's Hospital, and with added experience and power he came to be known far and wide as the greatest surgical teacher in Europe. His students came from England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, America, until in his later life, when he went traveling about the world,

he found an old friend in every village and counted his pupils by thousands. This was a great power, and needs no comment. Best known among those who came under his influence were Aston Key, Bransby Cooper, Benjamin Travers, John Morgan, John Collins Warren, John Hilton, Edward Cock, Alfred Poland, and Frederick le Gros Clark.

The fine portrait, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, shows us Sir Astley Cooper in the prime of life; as such a man he is best known to us, and such he was in the height of his life work. His practice at that time was enormous, and he saw more patients than would be possible for any one man in our elaborate days. After his morning dissections and breakfast he saw his gratuitous patients first, and then from nine o'clock until one came the stream of regular patients to his consulting room. Here he did every variety of practice - from advising boarding-school girls about their diet to operations of considerable magnitude. Quick and sudden cutting was common with him. He would open a felon, excise a lipoma, or amputate a finger with hardly so much as a by your leave.

Promptly at one o'clock, regardless of the fact that his house was still crowded with patients, he would jump into his carriage and drive rapidly to the hospital. There he always made the ward visit at once, accompanied by a throng of students. His manner towards hospital patients was always most kindly and considerate, and he used to say that he owed half his success in practice to his invariable rule of impartial courtesy towards rich and poor. At two o'clock

promptly he began his daily clinical lecture, which, combined with operating, lasted from one to two hours. He then left the hospital to make his round of private calls, and arrived at home for dinner about seven o'clock. After dinner came a half-hour's nap, then the evening calls, and home to bed between twelve and two.

He insisted strongly upon the value of a certain amount of general medical practice, as he felt that no surgeon who narrowed his attention to the immediate and obvious lesion under inspection could consider properly the broad bearings of surgical disease upon the individual. He always stated in his lectures that the mere operation was a small detail in surgical therapeutics; that general conditions of health required the most careful investigation - for which only a man in large general practice was competent; and that the care of the sick after operation demanded the widest experience.

Astley Cooper did not jump at once into practice. His beginnings were small enough, and he met with the rebuffs and insolence with which all young professional men are familiar. Here is a schedule of his early receipts: first year, £5 5s.; second year, £26; third year, £64; fourth year, £96; fifth year, £100; sixth year, 200; seventh year, £400; eighth year, £610; ninth year (the year he was appointed surgeon to Guy's Hospital), £1100. This was the year 1800 and he was thirty-two years old.

In those days, as is well known, surgeons did not make stated charges, but received the fees proffered