of the vascular system. Reid was a good anatomist, one of our most distinguished Medico-Chirurgical Fellows, and a liberal benefactor. If, as has been stated, he was not a convert on account of his age, it was on account of his youth, for the Harveian doctrine, if in meagre form, is to be found in the later editions (5th) of his Manual. But we would miss Lodge, the poet, ‘cried up to the last for physic,' as he had recently started for the Continent. And we may be sure that Harvey’s old fellow-students at Padua—Fortescue, Fox, Willoughby, Mounsell, and Darcy—would honour their friend and colleague with their presence; and Edward Lister, also a fellow-Paduan, the first of his name in a family which has given three other members to our profession—two distinguished and one immortal.[1] It was not a large gathering, as the Fellows, members, licentiates, and candidates numbered only about forty; but as the lecture was a great event in the community, there would be present many interested and intelligent laymen, of the type of Digby, and Ashmole, and Pepys—the 'curious’, as they were called, for whom throughout the seventeenth century the anatomy lecture equalled in attraction the play. Delivered in Latin, and interspersed here and there with English words and illustrations, there were probably more who saw than who comprehended, as Sir Thomas Browne indicated to his son Edward when he lectured at Chirurgeons’ Hall.
It is a fortunate, and perhaps a unique, circumstance in bibliography that the manuscript of this course of lectures should have been preserved, and that we should be able to follow step by step the demonstration
- ↑ I followed Munk’s Roll, but Lord Lister tells me that he does not know of a relationship. I am sorry, as Martin Lister deserves the honour.
