Address of John Marshall, F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1883.

  • Marshall, John, 1818-1891.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of John Marshall, F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1883. 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.

    32/44 (page 30)
    festations of respect from the assembled Fellows, all of whom rose as lie advanced in the absence of the senior Censor to hand over the insignia of the presidential office to Sir William Jeiiner. The crises and trials of his last illness were watched with anxiety and sorrow, and his death was followed by notices which seemed to exhaust the language of eulogy ; for whilst time had not dimmed his fame, it had served to change respect into affection, and admiration into reverence. An old friend of Sir Thomas Watson, and a former warm-hearted president of this Society, in a communication from Nice, says, I have thought how best in one short sentence to write his epitaph. I can find no fitter words than those written well nigh 3000 years ago. ' Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.^ * It now only remains for me to mention two deceased Honorary Fellows, the one a physicist, chemist, and physio- logist, the other a great naturalist. They were labourers in fields situated on the borders of the domain of Medicine and Surgery proper. They were eminent representatives of a class, which both gives and receives honour by being enrolled amongst us ; and although the death of such men may not affect us so profoundly as that of our more inti- mately known professional brethren, yet it leaves a sense of vacancy and loss which it is our duty to acknowledge, with some accompanying homage to their worth. James William Draper, of New York, though justly * I once, whilst yet a student, consulted Sir Thomas Watson, then Dr. Watson, as to a persistent, dull pain through the upper ptirt of the right chest, from front to hack. Looking very grave the while, he took infinite pains in examining me, and entered the details in one of his little, fat, red- covered case hooks. When he had finished, he laid his hand on my right shoulder and s-aid kindly, If you don't trouhle yourself ahout that, it will never trouble you; if it should, come back to me. But, he added, you will outlive me. I afterwards found that the pain was due to, and kept up by, the use of the lesser pectoral muscle in the frequent mounting of omni- buses, to which I was somewhat addicted in those days.