The late Mr. Abernethy / [John Abernethy].

  • Abernethy, John, 1764-1831.
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The late Mr. Abernethy / [John Abernethy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ter which seemed to waver between evidences of great genius and eccentricity, almost amounting at times to a manner bordering upon a minor degree of mental insanity. Great, however, as was his enthusiasm upon his favorite topics, he was in reality a safe and ju¬ dicious practitioner, whenever his mind could be brought to bear upon a case. His practice was never characterised by rashness of treatment, or experimental resources, but it was too frequently, perhaps, prejudiced by one prevailing theory. This theory he adopted by a constant habit of referring disorders to some consti¬ tutional derangement, arising from impaired or vitiated digestion ; and the manner in which he sometimes sought to relieve a local affection, by attacking the bowels, gave a ludicrous air to his practice, and frequently impressed the patient with a want of confidence in his skill and knowledge. As a physiologist, his views of life were rational and philosophical. He was a great admirer of John Hunter, and opposed every effort that was attempted to establish those doctrines of materialism which emanated from the French school of the last century. Mr. Abernethy was one of the best examples of the absurdity of separating the practice of surgery from physic by any determinate bounds. He showed in his different publications that the limits of surgery were not confined to the external parts of the body, and that when these were aflected, the constitution suffered more or less either in cause or effect. He showed that while the eye of the surgeon was upon the local disease, it must also be directed generally to the whole internal system. As a lecturer in anatomy and surgery, Mr. Abernethy was in¬ teresting, instructive, clear, and amusing, but never eloquent. His manner was peculiar, abrupt, and conversational; and often when he indulged in episodes and anecdotes, he convulsed his class with laughter, especially when he used to enforce his descriptions by earnest gesticulation. Frequently while lecturing, he would descend from his high stool, on which he sat with his legs dangling like a child, to exhibit to his class some peculiar attitudes and movements illustrative of the results of different casualties and disorders ; so that a stranger coming in, unacquainted with the lecturer’s topics, might easily have supposed him to be an actor entertaining his audience with a mono¬ logue after the manner of Mathews or Yates. This disposition indeed gave rise to a joke among his pupils of ‘ Ahernethy at Home, whenever he lectured upon any special subject. In relating a case, he was seen at times to be quite fatigued with the contortions into which he threw his body and limbs; and the stories he would tell of his consultations, with the dialogue between his patient and himself, were theatrical and comic to the greatest degree. At one period of his popularity and zenith as a lecturer upon the subject of the disorders of health, his pupils regarded his doctrines with such devotion as implicitly to practice the precepts they con¬ tained with respect to rigid abstinence in diet. And when blue pill was sure to be referred to in every lecture, and in every case, the pupils were known to carry it about them, spread it upon bread instead of butter, smear their tongues with it, or swallow a pill occasionally. In his own adoption of the system he recommended, he at one time