Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/863

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SKETCH OF SIR RICHARD QUAIN.
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tical and statesmanlike views which were generally sustained by the after history of the affairs to which they pertained. Besides the Dictionary of Medicine, Dr. Quain, with a number of eminent colaborers, prepared an Elements of Anatomy, which has passed through many editions, and has a high rank in the literature of the profession.

Dr. Quain received an honorary degree of M. D. from the Royal University of Ireland in 1887, and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in the same year; was made a Doctor of Laws of the University of Edinburgh in 1889; in the same year was appointed Physician Extraordinary to her Majesty the Queen; was made a Doctor of Medicine of the University of Dublin in 1890; was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1871; was a fellow and late president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society; a fellow of the Royal Botanical Society; a member and late president of the Pathological Society of London, to the Transactions of which he made several valuable contributions; was a member and late president of the Harveian Society of London; and a member of the senate of the University of London. On New Year's day, 1891, he was made a baronet of the United Kingdom.

His medical practice was largely in the higher circles of London society, and he enjoyed the personal friendship of many of the leading men of his time, among whom Carlyle, John Delane, proprietor of the Times, Landseer, and Robert Lowe are named.

Sir Richard Quain had been ill for more than a year previous to his death, and for the last six months confined to his bed. His last appearance in public was at the reading of his paper on the Cause of the First Sound of the Heart, before the Royal Society, in June, 1897, when the president made a special reference to the courage he displayed. The paper had been written in bed, and he had left his bed to present and defend it.

"His life," says Nature, "had been one of ceaseless activity, good health, and overflowing spirits; and when overtaken by disease he appeared not to regard or understand rest, physician though he was." The Lancet says: "To few men in our profession has the gift of every characteristic that calls forth the affectionate esteem of their brethren been so liberally vouchsafed as to Sir Richard Quain. His genial presence and his brilliant power of saying epigrammatic things, and saying them with the true humorous instinct of his race, made him ever popular; while his wide sympathies and unvarying kindness gave him in the eyes of those who had the privilege of personal relations with him something more true and permanent than social popularity, the affection of his younger brethren in the profession of medicine."