bladder over its mouth, how much new air will this produce, and has this the quality of common air?" We need hardly add, that about a hundred years after this, Dr. Black answered this capital query, and in doing so, transformed the whole face of chemistry. We now find that, in contradiction to the generally received account, Wood, who was an Oxford man, and living on the spot, says, in his spiteful way, Mr. Locke, after having gone through the usual courses preparatory to practice, entered upon the physic line, and got some business at Oxford." Nothing can be more explicit than this, and more directly opposed to Le Clerc's account of his friend's early life, which, it may be remembered, was chiefly derived from notes furnished by the second Lord Shaftesbury, whose information must necessarily have been at second or third hand. In 1666, Lord Ashley, afterward the first Lord Shaftesbury, came to Oxford to drink the water of Astrop; he was suffering from an abscess in his chest, the consequence of a fall from his horse. Dr. Thomas, his lordship's attendant, happening to be called out of town, sent his friend Locke, then practicing there, who examined into his complaints, and advised the abscess to be opened; this was done, and, as the story goes, his lordship's life was saved. From this circumstance took its origin the well-known friendship of these two famous men. That their connection at first was chiefly that of patient and doctor, is plain from the expression, He, the Earl, would not suffer him to practice medicine out of his house, except among some of his particular friends," implying that he was practicing when he took him. In 1668, Locke, then in his 36th year, accompanied the Earl and Countess of Northumberland to the Continent, as their physician. The Earl died on his journey to Rome, leaving Locke with the Countess in Paris. When there, he attended her during a violent attack of what seems to have been tic-douloureux, a most interesting account of which, and of the treatment he adopted, was presented by the late Lord King to the London College of Physicians, and was read before them in 1829. We have, by the great kindness of Dr. Paris, the president of the College, had access to a copy of this medical and literary curiosity, which, besides its own value as a plain, clear statement of the case, and as an example of simple, skillful treatment, is the best of all proofs that at that time Locke was a regular physician. We cannot give this case higher praise, or indicate more significantly its won derful superiority to the cases to be found in medical authors of the same date, than by saying that in expression, in description, in diagnosis, and in treatment, it differs very little from what we have in our own best works. After the Earl's death, Locke returned to England, and seems to have lived partly at Exeter House with Lord Shaftesbury, and partly at Oxford. It was in 1670, at the latter place, that he sketched the first outline of his immortal Essay, the origin of which he has so modestly recorded in his Epistle to the Reader. Dr. Thomas, and most probably Dr. Sydenham, were among the "five or six friends who met at my chambers," and started the idea of that work, "which has done more than any other single work to rectify prejudice, to undermine established errors, to diffuse a just mode of thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries nature has set to the human faculties. If Bacon first discovered the rules by which knowledge is to be advanced, Locke has most contributed by precept and example to make mankind at large observe them, and has thus led to that general diffusion of a healthful and vigorous understanding, which is at once the greatest of all improvements, and the instrument by which all other improvements must be accomplished." About this time Locke seems to have been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1674 he took the degree of Bachelor of Medicine; he never was Doctor of Medicine, though he generally passed among his friends as Dr. Locke. In 1675 he went abroad for his health, and apparently, also, to pursue his medical studies. He remained for some time at Montpellier, then the most famous of the schools of medicine. He attended the lectures of the celebrated Barbyrac, to whose teaching Sydenham is understood to have been so much indebted. When there, and during his residence abroad, he kept a diary, large extracts from which are for the first time given by Lord King. The following * Lord King refers to numerous passages in Locke's Diaries exclusively devoted to medical subjects, which he has refrained from publishing, as unlikely to interest the general public; and Dr. Forster gives us to understand that he has in his witty letters to his friend Furley on medicine, his possession "some ludicrous, sarcastic, and truly original profession;" but which letters the doctor declines giving to the public "in these days of absurd refinement." We would gladly forswear our Locke considered worth the writing down about refinement to have a sight of them; anything that anything is likely to be worth the reading. account of the annual " 'capping" at Mont- | for the Doctor held his professorship till the pellier is very amusing. "The manner of 10th October 1679, and in November followmaking a Doctor of Physic is this: 1st, a ing, married Rebecca, the daughter of Mr. procession in scarlet robes and black caps- Lucy Knightley of Hackney, a Hamburg the professor took his seat-and after a merchant." And we know that on the 10th company of fiddlers had played a certain of May that same year, Locke was sent for time, he made them a sign to hold, that he from Paris by Lord Shaftesbury, when his might have an opportunity to entertain the Lordship was made President of Sir Wilcompany, which he did in a speech against liam Temple's Council, half a year after innovations the musicians then took their which they were both exiles in Holland. As turn. The Inceptor or candidate, then be- we have already said, there is something gan his speech, wherein I found little edifi- very characteristic in this jocular, pawky, cation, being chiefly complimentary to the affectionate letter. chancellor and professors, who were present. The Doctor then put on his head the cap that had marched in on the beadle's staff, in sign of his doctorship-put a ring upon his finger-girt himself about the loins with a gold chain-made him sit down beside him that having taken pains he might now-how much the philosophy of mind would take ease, and kissed and embraced him in token of the friendship which ought to be amongst them." From Montpellier he went to Paris, and was a diligent student of anatomy under Dr. Guenelon, with whom he was afterward so intimate, when living in exile at Amsterdam. In June 1667, when in Paris, he wrote the following jocular letter to his friend Dr. Mapletoft, then physic professor at Gresham College. This letter, which is not noticed in any life of Locke that we have seen, is thus introduced by Dr. Ward : — “ Dr. Mapletoft did not continue long at Gresham, and yet longer than he seems to have designed, by a letter to him, written by the famous Mr. John Locke, dated from Paris, 22d June 1677, in which is this passage: 'If either absence (which sometimes increases our desires) or love (which we see every day produces strange effects in the world) have softened you, or disposed you toward a liking for any of our fine new things, 'tis but saying so, and I am ready to furnish you, and should be sorry not to be employed; I mention love, for you know I have a particular interest of my own in it. When you look that way, nobody will be readier, as you may guess, to throw an old shoe after you, much for your own sake, and a little for a friend of yours. But were I to advise, perhaps I should say that the lodgings at Gresham College were a quiet and comfortable habitation.' By this passage," continues Ward, "it seems probable that Dr. Mapletoft had then some views to marriage, and that Mr. Locke was desirous, should it so fall out, to succeed him. But neither of these events happened at the time, There can be little doubt from this, that so late as 1677, when he was 45 years of age, Locke was able and willing to undertake the formal teaching of medicine. It would not be easy to say how much mankind would have at once lost and gained have been hindered, and how much that of medicine would have been advanced, had John Locke's lungs been as sound as his understanding, and had he "stuck to the physic line,' or had his friend Dr. Mapletoft "looked that way" a little earlier, and made Rebecca Knightley his wife two years sooner, or had Lord Shaftesbury missed the royal reconcilement and his half year's presidency. Medicine would assuredly have gained something it still lacks, and now perhaps more than ever, had that "friend of yours,' having thrown the old shoe with due solemnity and precision at the heads of the happy couple, much for their sakes and a little for his own, settled down in that quiet, comfortable, baccalaurean habitation, over against the entrance into Bishopsgate street, and had thenceforward, in the prime of life, directed the full vigor of that singularly enlightened, sound, humane, and practical understanding, to the exposition, of what Lord Grenville so justly calls, "the large and difficult" subject of medicine. What an amount of gain to rational and effective medicinewhat demolition of venerable and mischievous error-what exposition of immediately useful truth-what an example for all future laborers in that vast and perilous field, of the best method of attaining the best ends, might not have been expected from him of whom it was truly said that "he knew something of everything that could be useful to mankind!" It is no wonder then, that looking from the side of medicine, we grudge the loss of the Locke "Physic Lectures," and wish that we might, without fable, imagine ourselves in that quaint steep-roofed quad rangle, with its fifteen trees and its diagonal walks across the green Court; and at eight o'clock, when the morning sun was falling on the long legs and antennæ of the gilded grasshoppers, and the mighty hum of awakening London was beginning to rise, might figure to ourselves the great philosopher stepping briskly through the gate into his lecture-room-his handsome, serious face, set "in his hood, according to his degree in the university, as was thought meet for more order and comeliness sake," and there, twice every week in the term, deliver the "solemn Physic Lecture," in the Latin tongue, in dutiful accordance with the "agreement tripartite, between the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London-the wardens and commonalty of the mystery of mercers, and the lecturers in Gresham House ;" and again, six hours later, read the same "solemn lecture" we would fancy with more relish and spirit in the English tongue," "forasmuch," so good Sir Thomas' will goes, the greater part of the auditory is like to be of such citizens and others as have small knowledge, or none at all, of the Latin tongue, and for that every man, for his health's sake, will desire to have some knowledge of the art of physic." as We have good evidence, from the general bent and spirit of Locke's mind, and from some occasional passages in his letters, especially those to Dr. Molyneux, that he was fully aware of the condition of medicine at that time, and of the only way by which it could be improved. Writing to Dr. Molyneux, he says, "I perfectly agree with you concerning general theories-the curse of the time and destructive not less of life than of science-they are for the most part but a sort of waking dream, with which, when men have warmed their heads, they pass into unquestionable truths. This is beginning at the wrong end, men laying the foundation in their own fancies, and then suiting the phenomena of diseases, and the cure of them, to these fancies. I wonder, after the pattern Dr. Sydenham has set of a better way, men should return again to this romance way of physic. But I see it is more easy and more natural for men to build castles in the air of their own than to survey well those that are on the ground. Nicely to observe the history of diseases in all their changes and circumstances is a work of time, accurateness, attention, and judgment, and * The eloquent Buffon thus speaks of the gift of observation: Il y a une espèce de force de génie, wherein if men, through prepossession or oscitancy, mistake, they may be convinced of their error by unerring nature and matter of fact. What we know of the works of nature, especially in the constitution of health and the operations of our own bodies, is only by the sensible effects, but not by any certainty we can have of the tools she uses, or the ways she works by." But we must draw this notice of Locke in the character of Doctor to a close. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1697, there is an account by him of an odd case of hypertrophied nails, which he had seen at La Charité when in Paris, and he gives pictures of the hornlike excrescences, one of them upward of four inches long. The second Lord Shaftesbury, who was Locke's pupil, and for whom he chose his wife, in a letter to Furley, who seems to have been suffering from a relapse of intermittent fever, explains, with great distinctness and good sense," Dr. Locke's method" of treating this disease with the Peruvian bark; adding, "I am satisfied, that of all medicines, if it be good of its kind, and properly given, it is the most innocent and effectual, whatever bugbear the world makes of it, especially the tribe of inferior physicians, from whom it cuts off so much business and gain." We now conclude our notices of Locke's medical history, which, however imperfect, seem to us to warrant our original assertion, with the following weighty sentence taken from the admirable "Fragment on Study" given by Lord King, and which was written when Locke was at his studies at Oxford. It accords nicely with what we have already quoted from Dugald Stewart: "Physic, polity, and prudence are not capable of demonstration, but a man is principally helped in them, 1, by the history of matter of fact; and, 2, by a sagacity of inquiring into probable causes, and effects. Whether a certain course in public and finding out an analogy in their operations or private affairs will succeed well-whether et de courage d'esprit, à pouvoir envisager sans s'étonner, la Nature dans la multitude innombrable de ses productions, et à se croire capable de les de gout, à les aimer, plus grand que le gout qui n'a comprendre et de les comparer; il y a une espèce pour but, que des objets particuliers, et l'un peut dire, que l'amour et l'étude de la Nature, suppose dans l'esprit deux qualités qui paroissent opposées, les grandes vues d'un génie ardent, qui embrasse tout d'un coup d'œil, et les petites attentions d'un instinct laborieux, qui ne s'attache qu'à un seul point." Gaubius calls it "masculum illud observandi studium veteribus tantopere excultum." uance of "the ancient and serious diligence of Hippocrates." This serious diligence, this dxpisa or nicety of observation, by which the divine old man of Cos" achieved so much, was Sydenham's master-principle in practice and in speculation. He proclaimed it anew, and displayed in his own case its certain and inestimable fruits. SYDENHAM, the prince of practical physicians, whose character is as beautiful and as genuinely English as his name, did for his art what Locke did for the philosophy of mind-he made it, in the main, observational; he made knowledge a means, not an end. It would not be easy to over-estimate our obligations as a nation to these two men, in regard to all that is involved in health of It appears to us one of the most interestbody and soundness of mind. They were ing, as it is certainly one of the most difficult among the first in their respective depart- and neglected departments of medical literaments to show their faith in the inductive ture, to endeavor to trace the progress of method, by their works. They both pro- medicine as a practical art, with its rules fessed to be more of guides than critics, and and instruments, as distinguished from its were the interpreters and servants of nature, consolidation into a systematic science with not her diviners and tormentors. They its doctrines and laws, and to make out how pointed out a way, and walked in it; they far these two, which conjoined, form the taught a method, and used it, rather than philosophy of the subject, have or have not announced a system or a discovery; they harmonized with, and been helpful to each collected and arranged their visa before set- other, at different periods of their histories. tling their cogitata, a mean-spirited proceed- Much might be done to make such an ining, doubtless, in the eyes of the prevailing quiry instructive and attractive, by marking dealers in hypotheses, being in reality the out the history of medicine into three or four exact reverse of their philosophy. How cu- great epochs, and taking, as representative rious, how humbling, to think that it was not of each, some one distinguished artsman or till this time, that men in search of truth practitioner, as well as teacher or discoverer. were brought to see that "it is not the in- We might have Hippocrates and his epoch, Sysufficiency or incapacity of man's mind, but denham and his John Hunter, Pinel, and Lænthe "remote standing or placing thereof, that nec and theirs. These great men differed cerbreedeth mazes and incomprehensions; for tainly widely enough in character and in ciras the sense afar off is full of mistaking, but cumstances, but all agreed in this, their possessis exact at hand, so is it of the understanding in large measure, and of rare quality, ing, the remedy whereof is not to quicken or strengthen the organ, but to go nearer to the object." Well might the noble author even now say, as he does in the context-(he is treating of medicine)—" Medicine is a science which hath been more professed than labored, more labored than advanced, the labor being in my judgment more in a circle than in progression: I find much iteration, but 66 * Dr. Thomas Young puts this very powerfully in the preface to his "Introduction to Medical Literature." There is, in fact, no study more difficult than that of physic: it exceeds, as a science, the comprehension of the human mind; and those who blunder onward, without attempting to understand what they see, are often nearly on a level with those who depend too much on imperfect generalizations." "Some departments of knowledge defy all attempts to subject them to any didactic method, and require the exercise of a peculiar address, a judgment, or a taste which can only be formed by indirect means. It appears that physic is one of those departments in which there is frequent necessity for the exercise of an incommunicable facul ty of judgment, and a sagacity which may be called transcendental, as extending beyond the simple combination of all that can be taught by precept.” that native sagacity, that power of serious, choice, patient, continuous, honest observation, which is at once a gift and a habit; that instinct for seeking and finding, which Bacon calls "experientia literata, sagacitas potius et odoratio quædam venatica, quam scientia;" that general strength and soundness of understanding, and that knack of being able to apply their knowledge, instantly and aright, in practice, which must ever constitute the cardinal virtues of a great physician, the very pith and marrow of his worth. Of the two first of these famous men, we fear there survives in the profession little more than the names; and we receive from them, and are made wiser and better by inheriting their treasures of honest and exquisite observation, of judicious experience, without, we fear, knowing or caring much from whom it has come. "One man soweth, and another reapeth." The young forget the old, the children their fathers; and we are all too apt to reverse the saying of the wise king," I praised the dead that are already dead, more than the living that are yet alive." As we are not sufficiently conscious of, so we assuredly are not adequately grateful for that accumulated volume of knowledge, that body of practical truth, which comes down as a gift to each one of us from six thousand years of human endeavor, and which, like a mighty river, is moving forever onwardwidening, deepening, strengthening, as it goes; for the right administration and use of whose untold energies and wealth, we, to whom it has thus far descended, are responsible to Him from whom it comes, and to whose feet it is hastening-responsible to an extent we are too apt to forget, or to underrate. We should not content ourselves with sailing victoriously down the stream, or with considering our own portion of it merely; we should go up the country oftener than we do, and see where the mighty feeders come in, and learn and not forget their names, and note how much larger, how much powerfuller the stream is after they have joined it. It is the lot of the successful medical practitioner who is more occupied with discerning diseases and curing them, than with discoursing about their essence, and arranging them into systems, who observes and reflects in order to act, rather than to speak,-it is the lot of such men to be invaluable when alive, and to be forgotten soon after they are dead, and this not altogether or chiefly from any special ingratitude or injustice on the part of mankind, but from the very nature of the case. Much that made such a man what the community, to their highest profit, found him to be, dies with him. His inborn gifts, and much of what was most valuable in his experience, were necessarily incommunicable to others, this depending much on his forgetting the process by which, in particular cases, he made up his mind, and its minute successive steps, from his eagerness to possess and put in action the result, and much from his being confident in the general soundness of his method, and caring little about formally recording to himself his transient mental conditions, much less announcing them articulately to others;-but mainly, we believe, because no man can explain directly to another man how he does any one practical thing, the doing of which he himself has accomplished, not at once, or by imitation, or by teaching, but by repeated personal trials, by missing much before ultimately hitting. You may be able to expound excellently to your son the doctrine of projectiles, or read him a course of lectures upon the principles of horsemanship, but you cannot make over to him your own knack as a dead-shot, or make him keep his seat over a rasping fence. He must win these for himself as you have done before him. Thus it is that much of the best of a man like Sydenham, dies with him. It is very different with them who frequent the field of scientific discovery. Here matters are reversed. No man, for instance, in teaching anatomy or physiology, as he comes to enounce each new subordinate discovery, can fail to unfold and to enhance the ever-increasing renown, of that keen black-avic'd little man, with his piercing eye, "small and dark, and so full of spirit;" his compact broad forehead, his self-contained peremptory air, his dagger at his side, and his fingers playing with its hilt, to whom we owe the little book, " De motu cordis et sanguinis circulatione." This primary, capital discovery, which no succeeding one can ever supersede or obscure, he could leave consummate to mankind; but he could not so leave the secret of his making it; he could not transmit that combination of original genius, invention, exactness, perseverance, and judgment, which enabled him, and can alone enable any man to make any such permanent addition to the amount of scientific truth. But what fitted Harvey for what he achieved, greatly unfitted him for such excellence in practice as Sydenham attained. He belonged to the science more than to the art. His friend Aubrey says of him, that "though all his profession would allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I have never heard of any who admired his therapeutic way." A mind of his substance and mettle, speculative and arbitrary, passing rapidly and passionately from the particular to the general, from multitude to unity, with, moreover, a fiery temper and an extemporaneous dagger as its sting, was not likely to take kindly to the details of practice, or make a very useful or desirable family doctor. Sydenham again, though his works everywhere manifest that he was gifted with a large capacity and keen relish for abstract truth, moved habitually and by preference in the lower, but at the time the usefuller sphere of everyday practice, speculating chiefly in order to act, reducing his generalizations back to particulars, so as to answer some immediate instance, the result of which was the signallest success of "his therapeutic way." We have had in our own day two similar examples of the man of science and the man of art; the one Sir Charles Bell-like Harvey, the explorer, the discoverer, the man of |