prevailing winds an unbroken sweep across it. For this reason the rainfall is limited to a short season, and the population is compelled to store rainwater in cisterns for drinking purposes. Its soil is fertile, and cattle, poultry, vegetables and small fruits are produced. The island has been a dependency of Porto Rico since 1879, when its colonization was formally undertaken, and it is now described as a ward of the Vieques district of the department of Humacao. In 1902 the American naval authorities selected the Playa Sardinas harbour on the S. side of Culebra as a rendezvous of the fleet and marine encampments were located on shore. The strategic position of the island, its healthiness and its continued use as a naval station have given it considerable importance. Its population was 704 in 1899, which had increased to nearly 1200 in 1903.
CULLEN, PAUL (1803–1878), cardinal and archbishop of
Dublin, was born near Ballytore, Co. Kildare, and educated
first at the Quaker school at Carlow and afterwards at Rome,
where he joined the Urban College of the Propaganda and, after
passing a brilliant course, was ordained in 1829. He then
became vice-rector, and afterwards rector, of the Irish National
College in Rome; and during the Mazzini revolution of 1848 he
was rector of the Urban College, saving the property under the
protection of the American flag. In 1849, on the strong recommendation
of Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, Cullen was
nominated as successor to the primatial see of Armagh; and,
on his return to Ireland, presided as papal delegate at the
national council of Thurles in the August of 1850. Taking a
strong line on the educational question which was then agitating
Ireland, he took a leading part in the national movement of
1850–1852, and at first supported the Tenant Rights League.
In May 1852 he was translated to Dublin, and soon a divergence
of opinion broke out between him and the more ardent Nationalists
under Archbishop MacHale. When the Irish university
was started, with Newman, appointed by Cullen, at its head,
the scheme was wrecked by the personal opposition to the
archbishop of Dublin. As time went on, his distrust of the
national movement grew deeper; and in 1853 he sternly forbade
his clergy to take part publicly in politics, and for this he was
denounced by the Tablet newspaper. His own political opinion
had best be told in his own words. “For thirty years I have
studied the revolution on the continent, and for nearly thirty
years I have watched the Nationalist movement in Ireland.
It is tainted at its sources with the revolutionary spirit. If any
attempt is made to abridge the rights and liberties of the Catholic
Church in Ireland, it will not be by the English government nor
by a ‘No Popery’ cry in England, but by the revolutionary and
irreligious Nationalists of Ireland” (Purcell’s Life of Manning,
ii. 610). Cullen, therefore, while an ardent patriot, was consistently
an opponent of Fenianism. He was made cardinal in
1866, being the first Irish cardinal. Energetic as an administrator,
churches and schools rose throughout his diocese; and
the excellent Mater Misericordiae Hospital and the seminary
at Clonlife are lasting memorials of his zeal. He took part in
the Vatican Council as an ardent infallibilist. In 1873 he was
defendant in a libel action brought against him by the Rev.
R. O’Keeffe, parish priest of Callan, on account of two sentences
of ecclesiastical censure pronounced by the cardinal as papal
delegate. The damages were laid at £10,000. Three of the four
judges allowed the defence of the cardinal to be valid; but it
was held that the papal rescript upon which he relied for his
extraordinary powers as delegate was illegal under statute; and
the lord chief justice decided that the plaintiff could not renounce
his natural and civil liberty. After several days’ trial, during
which Cullen was submitted to a very close examination, the verdict
was given for the plaintiff with ¼d. damages. The cardinal
died in Dublin on the 24th of October 1878.
(E. Tn.)
CULLEN, WILLIAM (1710–1790), Scottish physician and
medical teacher, was born at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, on the
15th of April 1710. He received his early education at the
grammar-school of Hamilton, and he appears to have subsequently
attended some classes at the university of Glasgow.
He began his medical career as apprentice to John Paisley, a
Glasgow surgeon, and after completing his apprenticeship he
became surgeon to a merchant vessel trading between London
and the West Indies. On his return to Scotland in 1732 he
settled as a practitioner in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire,
and in 1734–1736 studied medicine at Edinburgh, where
he was one of the founders of the Royal Medical Society.
In 1736 he began to practise in Hamilton, where he rapidly
acquired a high reputation. From 1737 to 1740 William Hunter
was his resident pupil, and at one time they proposed to enter
into partnership. In 1740 Cullen took the degree of M.D. at
Glasgow, whither he removed in 1744. During his residence at
Hamilton, besides the arduous duties of medical practice, he
found time to devote to the study of the natural sciences, and
especially of chemistry. On coming to Glasgow he appears to
have begun to lecture in connexion with the university, the
medical school of which was as yet imperfectly organized.
Besides the subjects of theory and practice of medicine, he
lectured systematically on botany, materia medica and chemistry.
His great abilities, enthusiasm and power of conveying instruction
made him a successful and highly popular teacher, and his
classes increased largely in numbers. At the same time he
diligently pursued the practice of his profession. Chemistry
was the subject which at this time seems to have engaged the
greatest share of his attention. He was himself a diligent
investigator and experimenter, and he did much to encourage
original research among his pupils, one of whom was Dr Joseph
Black. In 1751 he was appointed professor of medicine, but
continued to lecture on chemistry, and in 1756 he was elected
joint professor of chemistry at Edinburgh along with Andrew
Plummer, on whose death in the following year the sole appointment
was conferred on Cullen. This chair he held for ten years—his
classes always increasing in numbers. He also practised his
profession as a physician with eminent success. From 1757 he
delivered lectures on clinical medicine in the Royal Infirmary.
This was a work for which his experience, habits of observation,
and scientific training peculiarly fitted him, and in which his
popularity as a teacher, no less than his power as a practical
physician, became more than ever conspicuous. On the death
of Charles Alston in 1760, Cullen at the request of the students
undertook to finish his course of lectures on materia medica;
he delivered an entirely new course, which were published in
an unauthorized edition in 1771, but which he re-wrote and issued
as A Treatise on Materia Medica in 1789.
On the death of Robert Whytt (1714–1766), the professor of the institutes of medicine, Cullen accepted the chair, at the same time resigning that of chemistry. In the same year he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the professorship of the practice of physic, but subsequently an arrangement was made between him and John Gregory, who had gained the appointment, by which they agreed to deliver alternate courses on the theory and practice of physic. This arrangement proved eminently satisfactory, but it was brought to a close by the sudden death of Gregory in 1773. Cullen was then appointed sole professor of the practice of physic, and he continued in this office till a few months before his death, which took place on the 5th of February 1790.
As a lecturer Cullen appears to have stood unrivalled in his day. His clearness of statement and power of imparting interest to the most abstruse topics were the conspicuous features of his teaching, and in his various capacities as a scientific lecturer, a physiologist, and a practical physician, he was ever surrounded with large and increasing classes of intelligent pupils, to whom his eminently suggestive mode of instruction was specially attractive. Living at the time he did, when the doctrines of the humoral pathologists were carried to an extreme extent, and witnessing the ravages which disease made on the solid structures of the body, it was not surprising that he should oppose a doctrine which appeared to him to lead to a false practice and to fatal results, and adopt one which attributed more to the agency of the solids and very little to that of the fluids of the body. His chief works were First Lines of the Practice of Physic (1774); Institutions of Medicine (1770); and Synopsis
