CHAPTER VIII.

MEDICAL WORK IN LEEDS.

THOUGH the study and practice of medicine was the chief business of Dr. Heaton's life, that life, as will have been gathered from previous pages of this book, embraced other interests of a still wider character. As he advanced in life it came to pass that in his native town he became familiar to the majority of the inhabitants less as a medical man than as one of the most active and energetic of the servants of the community in which his lot was cast. It was as the president of the Philosophical and Literary Society, as the chairman of the Council of the Yorkshire College, as the active supporter of all the chief movements for promoting the social and educational progress of the people of Leeds, rather than as a physician in actual practice, that he became best known to his fellow-townsmen. And yet all the time no man had a keener interest than Dr. Heaton in the practice of his noble profession, nor could any one have been more anxious to extend the sphere of usefulness which is open to the medical man. His work as a

doctor resembled to some extent his public work generally. It was not of a kind to attract the notice of the general public; it was quiet and unobtrusive in its character. But among his medical colleagues his rank in the profession, and the great services which he constantly rendered to it, were fully recognised.

Before entering into any remarks upon Dr. Heaton's personal work as a physician, it seems desirable to say something about one of the great institutions of Leeds with which he was, almost throughout his whole life, closely connected, and of which, during no inconsiderable number of years, he was one of the chief supporters. This is the School of Medicine.

The School of Medicine was founded in Leeds in 1831. From a very interesting address delivered to the students at the opening of the session of 1881, by Mr. W. Nicholson Price, we take the following account of its origin and progress. And so it came to pass, fifty years ago, that this School was established quietly and unostentatiously-without any flourish of trumpets-for its promoters evidently intended, silently but surely, to lay the foundation upon the solid rock of public usefulness. There was no general meeting of the nobility and gentry of Leeds and its vicinity called to consider the desirability of taking such measures as should be deemed necessary to promote

medical education in this district, and to secure to its inhabitants the advantages which would naturally flow from the establishment of a Medical School in its midst. No; it might have been better if something of the sort had been done there have been those who thought so-but this was not the opinion of the founders. They possessed a certain spirit of independence and self-reliance (not bad qualities by the way), and so set to work to do the labour and undertake the responsibility of it themselves. For they were men of Old Leeds, and imbued with the Old Leeds spirit, the nature of which may be expressed in two words-" hard work." This is what succeeded here, and to-day we celebrate the jubilee of their effort.

'Of course they began in a very humble way. A few back rooms in the old Dispensary in North Street, which would hardly have compared favourably with the traditional two-pair back of a London lodging, and a dissecting room, the ascent to which was difficult and the descent dangerous, typical no doubt of the steepness of the path of knowledge, and of the peril which may result from slipping thereon, completed the local habitation of our good beginning. I remember well the little back-yard in which the carriages of the professors waited the conclusion of the lectures. Professors, did I say? That must have been a lapsus linguæ, or perhaps a portion of that

prophetic spirit which is apt to fall on certain people at certain periods, but they were only lecturers then for carriages I ought to have said gigs, for they were less pretentious times than the present. Those were the days when the name of Stanhope was a power among the coachbuilders, while that of Brougham, however well known in legal and literary circles, had not yet begun to influence the mode of locomotion, medical or general.

'I do not know that I can give you a better idea of the mode in which the medical education of that day, so far as a Medical School was concerned, was conducted, or of what was required of the student at that time, than by reading to you the advertisement of the second session :—

LEEDS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

Dispensary, North Street.

The NEXT SESSION will commence on Monday, October 1, 1832, in which the following COURSES of LECTURES will be delivered :

ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, and PATHOLOGY, by Mr. T. P. Teale and Mr. Garlick.

The LECTURES on the THORACIC VISCERA, by Mr. Thackrah.
DEMONSTRATIONS and DISSECTIONS, by Mr. Price.
PRINCIPLES and PRACTICE of SURGERY, by Mr. William

Hey.

The Lectures on HERNIA, and on the DISEASES of the PELVIC VISCERA, by Mr. Thackrah.

OPERATIVE SURGERY, by Mr. S. Smith and Mr. Hey.

MATERIA MEDICA and THERAPEUTICS, by Dr. Hunter.
CHEMISTRY, by Mr. West.

PRINCIPLES and PRACTICE of PHYSIC, by Dr. Williamson.
BOTANY, by Mr. John Hey and Mr. Denny.

FORENSIC MEDICINE, by Dr. Disney Thorpe.

MIDWIFERY and DISEASES of WOMEN and CHILDREN, by Mr. S. Smith.

'These lectures are recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, and certificates of attendance upon them confer the same qualification for examination as the certificate from the Medical Schools of London.

'I should explain that Mr. West and Mr. Denny were not on the council, or even members of the medical profession. The former was an eminent chemist and toxicologist in this town, and subsequently became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The latter was sub-curator of the Philosophical and Literary Society, and, along with Mr. West, took an active part in its scientific and literary labours.

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Suffer me to trouble you with a few remarks respecting some of the men referred to above. And first let me say that, for obvious reasons, I shall omit the mention of those whose names live after them by a process of direct descent, and whose works, nay whose very thoughts, are still active forces among us, daily working out the beneficent designs of their