built, are to be met with in Ireland, but there is only one other in Scotland, viz., that at Brechin. Petrie argues, in his Round Towers of Ireland, that these structures have been used as belfries, and also as keeps.
Abernethy, John,—a Protestant dissenting divine of Ireland, was born at Coleraine, county Londonderry, Ulster, where his father was minister (Nonconformist), on the 19th October 1680. In his thirteenth year he entered a student at the University of Glasgow. On concluding his course at Glasgow he went to Edinburgh University, where his many brilliant gifts and quick and ready wit—thought-born, not verbal merely—struck the most eminent of his contemporaries and even his professors, Returning home, he received licence to preach from his Presbytery before he was twenty-one. In 1701 he was urgently invited to accept the ministerial charge of an important congregation in Antrim; and after an interval of two years, he was ordained there on 8th August 1703. His admiring biographer tells of an amount and kind of work done there, such as only a man of fecund brain, of large heart, of healthful frame, and of resolute will, could have achieved. In 1717 he was invited to the congregation of Usher's Quay, Dublin, as colleague with Rev. Mr Arbuckle, and contemporaneously, to what was called the Old Congregation of Belfast. The Synod assigned him to Dublin. He refused to accede, and remained at Antrim. This refusal was regarded then as ecclesiastical high-treason; and a controversy of the most intense and disproportionate character followed. The controversy and quarrel bears the name of the two camps in the conflict, the "Subscribers" and the " Non-subscribers." Out-and-out evangelical as John Abernethy was, there can be no question that he and his associates sowed the seeds of that after-struggle in which, under the leadership of Dr Henry Cooke, the Arian and Socinian elements of the Irish Presbyterian Church were thrown out. Much of what he contended for, and which the "Subscribers" opposed bitterly, has been silently granted in the lapse of time. In 1726 the "Non-subscribers," spite of an almost wofully pathetic pleading against separation by Abernethy, were cut off, with due ban and solemnity, from the Irish Presbyterian Church. In 1730, spite of being a "Non-subscriber," he was called by his early friends of Wood Street, Dublin, whither he removed. In 1731 came on the greatest controversy in which Abernethy engaged, viz., in relation to the Test Act nominally, but practically on the entire question of tests and disabilities. His stand was "against all laws that, upon account of mere differences of religious opinions and forms of worship, excluded men of integrity and ability from serving their country." He was nearly a century in advance of his century. He had to reason with those who denied that a Roman Catholic or Dissenter could be a "man of integrity and ability." His Tracts—afterwards collected—did fresh service, generations later. And so John Abernethy through life was ever foremost where unpopular truth and right were to be maintained; nor did he, for sake of an ignoble expediency, spare to smite the highest-seated wrongdoers any more than the hoariest errors (as he believed). He died in 1740, having been twice married. (Kippis' Biog. Brit., s. v.; Dr Duchal's Life, prefixed to Sermons; Diary in MS., 6 vols. 4to; History of Irish Presbyterian Church).
(A. B. G.)
Abernethy, John, grandson of the preceding, an eminent surgeon, was born in London on the 3d of April 1764. His father was a London merchant. Educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School, he was apprenticed in 1779 to Sir Charles Blicke, a surgeon in extensive practice in the metropolis. He attended Sir William Blizzard's anatomical lectures at the London Hospital, and was early employed to assist Sir William as "demonstrator; " he also attended Pott's surgical lectures at St Bartholomew's Hospital, as well as the lectures of the celebrated John Hunter. On Pott's resignation of the office of surgeon of St Bartholomew's, Sir Charles Blicke, who was assistant-surgeon, succeeded him, and Abernethy was elected assistant-surgeon in 1787. In this capacity he began to give lectures in Bartholomew Close, which were so well attended that the governors of the hospital built a regular theatre (1790-91), and Abernethy thus became the founder of the distinguished School of St Bartholomew's. He held the office of assistant-surgeon of the hospital for the long period of twenty-eight years, till, in 1815, he was elected principal surgeon. He had before that time been appointed surgeon of Christ's Hospital (1813), and Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons (1814). Abernethy had great fame both as a practitioner and as a lecturer, his reputation in both respects resting on the efforts he made to promote the practical improvement of surgery. His Surgical Observations on the Constitutional Origin and Treatment of Local Diseases (1809)—known as "My Book," from the great frequency with which he referred his patients to it, and to page 72 of it in particular, under that name—was one of the earliest popular works on medical science. The views he expounds in it are based on physiological considerations, and are the more important that the connection of surgery with physiology had scarcely been recognised before the time he wrote. The leading principles on which he insists in "My Book" are chiefly these two:—1st, That topical diseases are often mere symptoms of constitutional maladies, and then can only be removed by general remedies; and 2d, That the disordered state of the constitution very often originates in, or is closely allied to deranged states of the stomach and bowels, and can only be remedied by means that beneficially affect the functions of those organs. His profession owed him much for his able advocacy of the extension in this way of the province of surgery. He had great success as a teacher from the thorough knowledge he had of his science, arid the persuasiveness with which he enunciated his views. It has been said, however, that the influence he exerted on those who attended his lectures was not beneficial in this respect, that his opinions were delivered so dogmatically, and all who differed from him were disparaged and denounced so contemptuously, as to repress instead of stimulating inquiry. It ought to be mentioned, that he was the first to suggest and to perform the daring operation of securing by ligature the carotid and the external iliac arteries. The celebrity Abernethy attained in his practice was due not only to his great professional skill, but also in part to the singularity of his manners. He used great plainness of speech in his intercourse with his patients, treating them often brusquely, arid sometimes even rudely. In the circle of his family and friends he was courteous and affectionate; and in all his dealings he was strictly just and honourable. He resigned his surgery at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1827, and his professor ship at the College of Surgeons two years later, on account of failing health, and died at his residence at Enfield on the 20th of April 1831. A collected edition of his works in five volumes was published in 1830. A biography, Memoirs of John Abernethy, by George Macilwain, F.R.C.S., appeared in 1853, and though anything but satisfactory, passed through several editions.
Aberration, or (more correctly) the Aberration of Light, is a remarkable phenomenon, by which stars appear to deviate a little, in the course of a year, from their true places in the heavens. It results from the eye of the observer being carried onwards by the motion of the earth on its orbit, during the time that light takes to
