Address of Charles West, M.D., F.R.C.P., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1879.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Charles West, M.D., F.R.C.P., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1879. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    unheeding the interests^ unwarmed by the affections which bind most men to the world around them. Eokitansky, on the other hand; was a man of equal diligence, of most varied general culture, and of wider sympathies. He had a home, and loved it, and was loved in it; his wife was a most accomplished lady, a great linguist, a musician of high repute; while of his four sons two have followed medicine, two music; his family thus some- what strangely dividing their allegiance to Apollo ; some votaries of Asclepias, some of Hermes. He rose by hard labour to posts of honour and usefulness • honour and usefulness were to him correlatives. The steps by which he climbed are recorded in various German journals, and in the admirable memoir from the pen, I believe, of the Librarian of the College of Surgeons, which appeared in the ' Medical Times and Gazette.^ He was born at Koniggratz, in Bohemia, a name unwelcome now to Austrian ears, and received his early education partly there, partly at Leitmeritz, where his father held a govern- ment appointment. His mother was descended from an Irish family which had settled in Austria, and been ennobled in the seventeenth century—an incident which carries us back to the time of Wallenstein and the Thirty Years' War. He began the study of medicine at Prague, completed it at Vienna, and gradu- ated therein 1828. He became assistaat to Johann Wagner in the Pathological Department of the General Hospital, and on Wagner's death succeeded to his appointment. In 1842 he began the publication of his ' Manual of Morbid Anatomy,' and in 1844 was nominated Ordinary Professor, having for some years held the position of Professor Extraordinary. The second edition of his work ' On Morbid Anatomy,' expressing in many respects widely different views from those contained in the first edition, was published in the years 1855 to 1861. But for work such as Hokitansky's, the recent advances in our knowledge of morbid anatomy would have been simply impossible. I prefer to give, as I am permitted, the estimate of Dr. Murchison, so much more competent than I to judge of the value of his labours. Eokitansky was not a clinical physician, and cannot be said to have been remarkable as an inquirer into the intimate nature