though lively, was broken in as a useful auxiliary to a still more energetic reason. The circumstances under which his mind was cultivated, were also conducive to its full and harmonious evolution. His education was left sufficiently to himself, to determine his faculties to a free and vigorous energy; sufficiently scholastic, to prevent a one-sided and exclusive development. It was also favourable to the same result, that from an early period of life, his activity was divided between practice, study, and teaching, while extended to almost every subject of medical science;-all however viewed in subordination to the great end of professional knowledge, the cure of disease.

Cullen's mind was essentially philosophic. Without neglecting observation, in which he was singularly acute, he devoted himself less to experiment than to arrangement and generalisation. We are not aware, indeed, that he made the discovery of a single sensible phænomenon. Nor do we think less of him that he did not. Individual appearances are of interest only as they represent a general law. In physical science the discovery of new facts is open to every blockhead with patience, manual dexterity, and acute senses; it is less effectually promoted by genius than by co-operation, and more frequently the result of accident than of design. But what Cullen did, it required individual ability to do. It required, in its highest intensity, the highest faculty of mind, that of tracing the analogy of unconnected observations, of evolving from the multitude of particular facts a common principle, the detection of which might recall them from confusion to system, from incomprehensibility to science. Of ten thousand physicians familiar with the same appearance as Cullen, is there one who could have turned these appearances to the same account? But though not an experimentalist, Cullen's philosophy was strictly a philosophy of experience. The only speculation he recognised as legitimate was induction. To him. theory was only the expression of a universal fact; and in rising to this fact, no one, with equal consciousness of power, was ever more cautious in the different steps of his generalisation.

Cullen's reputation, though high, has never been equal to his deserts. This is owing to a variety of causes. In medical science, a higher talent obtains perhaps a smaller recompense of popular applause than in any other department of knowledge. "Dat Galenus opes;" "the solid pudding," but not "the empty

praise." Of all subjects of scientific interest, men in general seem to have the weakest curiosity in regard to the functions of their own minds, and even bodies. So is it now, and, however marvellous, so has it always been. "Eunt homines," says St Austin, "mirari alta montium, ingentes fluctus maris, altissimos lapsus fluminum, oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum ;-seipsos relinquunt nec mirantur." For one amateur physiologist, we meet a hundred dilettanti chemists, and botanists, and mineralogists, and geologists. Even medical men themselves are, in general, equally careless and incompetent judges as the public at large, of all high accomplishment in their profession. Medicine they cultivate not as a science, but as a trade; are indifferent to all that transcends the sphere of vulgar practice; and affect to despise what they are unable to appreciate. But independently of the general causes which have prevented Cullen from obtaining his due complement of fame, there are particular causes which conspired also to the same result. His doctrine was not always fully developed in his works; his opinions have been ignorantly misrepresented; his originality invidiously impugned; and what he taught in his lectures, published without acknowledgment by his pupils.

Cullen's honour thus calling for vindication, was long abandoned to neglect. This may be in part explained by the peculiar difficulty of the task. He who was competent to appreciate Cullen's merits, and to assert for him his proper place among medical reasoners, behoved to be at home in medicine, both as a practical art, and as a learned science,―he required at once experience, philosophy, and erudition. But this combination is now unfortunately rare: we could indeed with difficulty name a second individual so highly qualified for this duty as the accomplished physician on whom it has actually devolved. The experience of a long and extensive practice,-habits of thought trained in the best schools of philosophy,—an excursive learning which recalls the memory of a former age, and withal an admiration of his subject, transmuting an arduous undertaking into a labour of love,-have enabled Dr Thomson, in his life of Cullen, to produce a work, which we have no hesitation in pronouncing the most important contribution from a British author to the history of medicine, since the commencement of our labours. Cullen's personal biography is comparatively meagre. His life is in his doctrine. But to exhibit this doctrine, as

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influenced by previous, and as influencing subsequent, speculation, was in a certain sort to exhibit the general progress of medical science. In the execution of this part of his labour, Dr Thomson presents an honourable exception to the common character of our recent historians of medicine. He is no retailer of second-hand opinions; and his criticism of an author is uniformly the result of an original study of his works. Though the life of a physician, the interest of this biography is by no means merely professional. "The Philosopher," says Aristotle, "should end with medicine, the Physician commence with philosophy." But philosophy and medicine have been always too much viewed independently of each other, and their mutual influence has never been fairly taken into account in delineating the progress of either. The history of medicine is, in fact, a part, and a very important part, of the history of philosophy. Dr Thomson has wholly avoided this defect; and his general acquaintance with philosophical and medical opinions, renders the Life of Cullen a work of almost equal interest to liberal inquirers, and to the welleducated practitioner.

William Cullen was born at Hamilton in the year 1710. By his father, a writer (Anglicè, attorney) by profession, and factor to the Duke of Hamilton, he was sprung from a respectable line of ancestors, who had for several generations been proprietors of Saughs, a small estate in the parish of Bothwell; through his mother, he was descended from one of the most ancient families in the county of Lanark, the Robertons of Ernock. Having completed his course of general education in the grammar school of his native town, and in the University of Glasgow, he was apprenticed to Mr John Paisley, a surgeon of extensive practice in that city. At this period, (that of Edinburgh recently excepted,) the Scottish Universities did not afford the means of medical instruction; and such an apprenticeship was then the usual and almost the only way in which the student of medicine could, in Scotland, acquire a knowledge of his profession. Having exhausted the opportunities of improvement which Glasgow supplied, Cullen, with the view of obtaining a professional appointment, went, in his twentieth year, to London. Through the interest of Commissioner Cleland, (Will Honeycomb of the Spectator,) probably his kinsman, he was appointed surgeon to a merchant vessel trading to the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, commanded by Captain Cleland of Auchinlee, a relation

of his own. In this voyage he remained for six months at Porto Bello; thus enjoying an opportunity of studying the effects of a tropical climate on the constitution, and the endemic character of West Indian diseases. On his return to London, with the view of perfecting his knowledge of drugs, he attended for some time in the shop of Mr Murray, an eminent apothecary in the city. Two years (1732-1734) he spent in the family of Captain Cleland, at Auchinlee, in the parish of Shotts, wholly occupied in the study and occasional practice of his profession; and after a season devoted to the study of general literature and philosophy, under a dissenting clergyman of Rothbury in Northumberland, he completed his public education by attending for two seasons (1734-5, 1735-6) the medical classes in the University of Edinburgh.

"The foundation," says his biographer, "of a new and extended medical school had been laid a few years before this time in Edinburgh, by the appointment of Dr Monro to the Chair of Anatomy in the University, and by the judicious arrangements which that excellent anatomist and experienced surgeon afterwards made with Drs Rutherford, Sinclair, Innes and Plummer, for the regular and stated delivery of lectures on the different branches of medicine. Previously to this arrangement, almost the only regular lectures given upon any subjects connected with medicine in Edinburgh, were those which had been delivered in the Hall of the College of Surgeons, the chief medical school in that city, from the first institution of the College, in the year 1505, till the transference of the anatomical class into the University in 1725.

"Though scarcely ten years had elapsed from the first establishment of a regular school of medicine in the University of Edinburgh when Dr Cullen became a student there, the reputation of that school was beginning to be everywhere acknowledged, and had already attracted to it, not only a great portion of those who were preparing themselves for the profession of medicine in the British dominions, but many students from foreign universities." -P. 8.

At the age of twenty-six, Cullen commenced practice in his native town, and with the most flattering success. His dislike to surgery soon induced him to devolve that department of business upon a partner; and for the last four years of his residence at Hamilton (having graduated at Glasgow), he practised only as a physician. Here he married Anna, daughter of the Reverend Mr Johnstone, minister of Kilbarchan, who brought him a large family, and formed the happiness of his domestic life for forty-six years. Here he also became the friend and medical preceptor of the late celebrated Dr William Hunter. Hunter had been edu

cated for the church; but an intercourse with Cullen determined him to a change of profession. After residing for a time in family with his friend, it was agreed that he should go and prosecute his studies in Edinburgh and London, with the intention of ultimately settling at Hamilton as Cullen's partner. This design was not, however, realized. Other prospects opened on the young anatomist while in London, and Cullen cordially concurred in an alteration of plan, which finally raised his pupil to a professional celebrity, different certainly, but not inferior to his own. Though thus cast at a distance from each other in after life, the friendship of these distinguished men continued to the last warm and uninterrupted.

Cullen, who, during his seven years' residence at Hamilton, had been sedulously qualifying himself for a higher sphere of activity, now removed to Glasgow. In the University of that city, with the exception of Anatomy, no lectures seem to have been previously delivered in any department of medicine. On his establishment in Glasgow, Cullen immediately commenced lecturer; and, by the concurrence of the medical professors, he was soon permitted to deliver, in the University, courses of the Theory and Practice of Physic, of Materia Medica, of Botany, and of Chemistry. In his lectures on Medicine, we find him maintaining in 1746, the same doctrines with regard to the theory of Fever, the Humoral Pathology, and the Nervous System, which he published in his writings thirty years thereafter.

"In entering upon the duties of a teacher of medicine, Dr Cullen ventured to make another change in the established mode of instruction, by laying aside the use of the Latin language in the composition and delivery of his lectures. This was considered by many as a rash innovation; and some, desirous to detract from his reputation, or not sufficiently aware of the advantages attending this deviation from established practice, have insinuated that it was owing to Dr Cullen's imperfect knowledge of the Latin that he was induced to employ the English language. But how entirely groundless such an insinuation is, must be apparent to every one at all acquainted with his early education, course of studies, and habits of persevering industry. When we reflect, too, that it was through the medium of the Latin tongue

* Cullen, we see, is represented by French medical historians as "having taken Barthez for his guide." (Boisseau, in Dict. des Sc. Méd.-Biogr. t. iii. p. 363.) A chronological absurdity. Barthez was twenty-four years younger than Cullen; the latter had, in his lectures, taught his peculiar doctrines twenty-eight years before "his guide" was yet known to the world; and Cullen's Institutions of Medicine preceded the Nova Doctrina de Functionibus of Barthez by two, the Nouveaux Elémens de la Science de l'Homme by six years.