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particularly one on lithotomy, are highly valued by the profession, and indicate both an independent and a reflecting mind.
A large portion of the success of Mr. Aston Key may be assigned to the interest he took in the cases consigned to his charge, whether in public or in private. Neither time nor trouble were spared in his endeavour to sift every case of difficulty to its root.
It cannot be denied, I fear, that he held somewhat eccentric opinions with respect to food and diet, and to which eccentricity his own untimely death may be in some measure attributed. I am informed that he leant much to the recommendation of a vegetable diet, and that he frequently denied his patients the indulgence in animal food. Whatever was his practice in reference to others, I believe there is little doubt that he adopted for himself a system of diet that was little likely to. afford him efficient protection against the horrible pestilence that pervaded the metropolis during the last summer.
An anecdote was mentioned to me by a common friend, which speaks loudly as to his condition at the date of his unfortunate attack. When asked as to the state of his health, only a few days prior to his last illness, his answer was, “I am as well as a man can be with most irritable bowels.” Within a week of this event, he was himself thrown prostrate by cholera in its most fearful form. One profuse action of his bowels was followed by almost immediate collapse, from which all the skill and experience of the eminent physicians who surrounded him, failed to extricate him, and he expired in nineteen hours from the period of his
