Mr. Owen's rejoinder to Mr. Nasmyth / [Richard Owen].

  • Owen, Richard, 1804-1892
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Owen's rejoinder to Mr. Nasmyth / [Richard Owen]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    genera Lepidotus and Splicerodus, rarely represented save by detached teeth, precisely similar in outward form, can now be distinguished from each other. Which of these discoveries will Mr. Nasmyth contend I plagiarised from him ? Why, if any thing else had been wanting to fix upon him the authorship of the slanderous review in the Medical Gazette for June 5th, it was his asser¬ tion that he had anticipated me in this application; for the instances of such application still remain hidden in his own breast. No one, save himself, as yet knows of his discoveries in this field. And now I come to notice two other attacks in your journal, by which it is attempted to divert my attention, and that of your readers, from the vul¬ nerable points of Mr. Nasmyth’s. The first professes to come from a “ M.R.C.S. residing at a distance from London,” complaining of the miserable state of the arrangement, display, and catalogue, of the Hunterian Museum, which I shall leave to speak for itself: the onus of the charge being, that the distant member was refused access to the microscopic preparations of osseous tis¬ sues, &c. with which I had illustrated my lectures. Now as it happens that Mr. Nasmyth is the only person who, upon application to the Museum Com¬ mittee, to use these specimens, has been refused—such specimens not forming part of the collection, but being my private property—I conclude that the ‘ distant resident from London,’ like the editorial ‘ we,’ and the editorially-dis¬ carded reviewer, is but another of the disguises in which Mr. Nasmyth has indulged his natural indignation in raking up malicious slander against me. But crimes, like diseases, are contagi¬ ous, and no sooner does Mr. Nasmyth— one set of charges preferred against me being refuted—rake up another from the contents of private letters, than his friend Mr. Tomes, recollecting conver¬ sations and events that took place in May 1838, next volunteers his version of them to prove that I have no claim to priority in making known to an Eng¬ lish audience, or to English readers, the tubular structure of the teeth. When Mr. Tomes was introduced to me as a discoverer of this structure, l had been working at the subject eleven months, and the number of preparations which I then possessed exceeded a hundred. Backed by tbe authorities, who had assured him of the novelty of his observations, I found him very difficult to be convinced of their anticipation by Purkinje and Retzius. He received from me the best information I could give him. I showed him as many of my preparations as my time would allow, especially those of the Megathe¬ rium and Acrodus, which best illustrated the analogy of ivory and bone. It was the interest he expressed at seeing these specimens thatinduced me to furnish him with fragments of the portions of teeth from which they were prepared. He told me he did not understand the Ger¬ man language ; but I shewed him the illustrations appended to Creplin’s Ger¬ man Translation of Retzius, in Muller’s Archives, and the diagrams I had co¬ pied from them to illustrate Retzius’s discoveries. This fact it does not suit Mr. Tomes to remember ; it would not square with Mr. Nasmyth’s assertion that I first became acquainted with Retzius’s discoveries through the me¬ dium of the translation which he, Mr. N., had prepared for the press. And such are the men whose envious carpings and calumnies my time is to be wasted in refuting. That mortified vanity should impel a man to revenge himself by deliberate misrepresentation, after the instance of Mr. Nasmyth, needed no further illus¬ tration by Mr. Tomes. It is a very unpleasant task to unde¬ ceive a man who comes to you under the delusion that he is a discoverer; it is still more disagreeable when such a person, persisting in his delusion, ob¬ trudes his anticipated observations on the Royal Society, and compels you to reject them; and I can assure Mr. Tomes, whose ang’er on both accounts appears to have been waiting for a vent since 1838, that to no one can these duties be more painful than to, sir, Your very obedient servant, Richard Owen. July 12, 1840. Wilson & OoiLyy, 57. Skinner Street. S.m'vhill, London