_EMINENT SPECIALISTS—continued._
_SIR W. BOWMAN, BRUDENELL CARTER, AND EYE DISEASES; TOYNBEE, HINTON,
AND EAR DISEASES._
The eye, the organ of light, was, till recent times, practically
a dark chamber. Only its grosser movements and the effects of its
lenses upon the rays of light were understood. Its minute structure,
its relationship to the brain, and the real nature of the morbid
changes occurring in it, were hidden. To-day its microscopic elements
are unravelled, and very much is known of their connexion with the
great nerve-centres behind them. Experiment and calculation have
gone far to settle the precise mode in which light gives rise to
sight, and affects our perception and judgment of external objects,
and the condition of the eye during life and health or disease has
been brought into view by the ophthalmoscope. The names of Helmholtz
and of Donders are inseparably connected with modern advances in the
physiology of the eye, while no English name is more conspicuous in
regard to the surgery of the eye than that with which we commence
this chapter.
WILLIAM BOWMAN, the third son of Mr. J. Eddowes Bowman, banker,
of Nantwich, and afterwards of Welshpool and Wrexham, was born at
Nantwich on July 20, 1816. He was early surrounded by scientific
associations, for his father was a botanist and geologist of wide
cultivation, having formed a very complete herbarium of British
plants, and having furnished to Sir Roderick Murchison valuable
original matter for his “Silurian System.”
Mr. Bowman placed his son at Hazelwood School, Birmingham, which
Sir Rowland Hill’s father was conducting on the principle of
the abolition of corporal punishment. The boys largely governed
themselves, printing a magazine of their own. They were taught
natural science too, a very unusual thing in those days. In such a
congenial atmosphere young Bowman flourished, and in time became head
boy.
An accident to one of his hands, about the close of his school
course, seems to have led to Mr. Bowman’s choice of surgery as a
profession. For some months he saw country practice with Mr. T. T.
Griffith, of Wrexham, seeing a good deal of cholera, which was then
prevailing, and spending his leisure in copying anatomical drawings
of the human bones and muscles. He then became, through the interest
of Mr. Joseph Hodgson, F.R.S., afterwards President of the College of
Surgeons, who had attended to his injured hand, a resident pupil at
the General Hospital, Birmingham, where he continued for five years.
These early years were fruitful in microscopical observations of both
healthy and diseased tissues, and even in experimental physiology,
for Mr. Bowman was one of those whose advancement in science has been
considerably due to experiments upon animals. In 1837, after a brief
visit to the Dublin medical schools, he became a student at King’s
College, London, where Robert Bentley Todd had been lately appointed
Professor of Physiology. Mr. Bowman’s skill and extensive knowledge
were soon made use of by Todd, and he was successively appointed
prosector and demonstrator of anatomy and curator of the anatomical
museum.
In 1838 Mr. Bowman visited the hospitals and museums of Holland,
Germany, and Vienna, and made a considerable stay in Paris in 1841.
Meanwhile his original studies were bearing fruit in important
papers contributed to the Royal Society, “On the Minute Structure
and Movements of Voluntary Muscle” (1840), “On the Contraction of
Voluntary Muscle in the Living Body” (1841), and, “On the Structure
and Use of the Malpighian Bodies of the Kidney” (1842). The latter
marked a conspicuous advance in the physiology of the kidney, and Mr.
Bowman was distinguished by receiving a royal medal for it, having
been elected F.R.S. in the previous year. Professor Michael Foster,
in his address on Physiology to the International Medical Congress of
1881, referred to these memoirs on muscle and the kidney as “classic
works, known and read of all instructed physiologists.”
In 1840 Mr. Bowman, at the early age of twenty-four, was appointed
Assistant-Surgeon to King’s College Hospital. His scientific writing
became much in demand. He wrote on Surgery in the “Encyclopædia
Metropolitana,” on Muscle, Motion, and Mucous Membrane in Todd’s
“Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology,” and took a large share with
Dr. Todd in writing and illustrating the “Physiological Anatomy
and Physiology of Man,” which was brought out in parts. The desire
to render this book as far as possible accurate and original by
repeating most of the observations of others and making new ones
where necessary, led to successive delays in the appearance of the
parts. Finally the closing part was written by Dr. Lionel Beale, and
published in 1856.
Having become a Fellow of the College of Surgeons in 1844, Mr. Bowman
in 1846 joined the staff of the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital,
Moorfields, as assistant-surgeon, having already made extensive
researches into the minute structure of all the organs of special
sense. His advent to the Moorfields Hospital was marked by the
delivery, in 1847, of a series of lectures on the “Parts Concerned in
Operations on the Eye,” which were afterwards separately published.
It was evident that ophthalmic surgery had gained a distinguished
recruit. Mr. Bowman had, independently of Brücke, discovered the
ciliary muscle, and his work brought forward numerous other facts
of structure for the first time. His paper “On the Structure of the
Vitreous Body,” contributed to the _Dublin Quarterly Journal of
Medical Science_, also attracted good attention. His suggestions on
operations for artificial pupil in the _Medical Times and Gazette_
also showed conspicuous capacity for ophthalmic surgery.
Although much urged to devote himself exclusively to this branch
of practice, Mr. Bowman preferred to continue in general surgical
practice for many years, attaining the surgeoncy to King’s College
Hospital in 1856, two years after he had reached the full surgeoncy
at Moorfields. In 1848 he had been conjoined with Dr. Todd in the
professorship of physiology and general and morbid anatomy in King’s
College, retaining the professorship, after Dr. Todd’s retirement, in
conjunction with Dr. Beale. But by 1855 Mr. Bowman found himself so
fully occupied that he finally resigned the professorship. He held
the surgeoncy to King’s College Hospital till 1862.
From this period Mr. Bowman has been the acknowledged leader
of ophthalmic practice. He was one of the first to employ the
ophthalmoscope. His numerous papers in the Ophthalmic Hospital
Reports and in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions have given
particulars of many improvements in operations on the eye, which
he has adopted, introduced, or improved. Lachrymal obstructions,
glaucoma, conical cornea, and cataract are among the subjects he
has specially dealt with; and he has by his clinical teaching and
operative example contributed not a little to the building up of
modern ophthalmic surgery. The well-earned honour of a baronetcy was
conferred upon him in 1884.
The breadth of Sir William Bowman’s sympathies is shown on the one
hand by the active part he took in the establishment in 1848 of
the St. John’s House Sisterhood for training nurses for hospitals,
families, and the poor, having joined its council from the beginning,
and having materially assisted Miss Florence Nightingale in her
various philanthropic nursing enterprises; and, on the other hand,
by his consistent advocacy of physiological experiment. He considers
that every step forwards in our knowledge of the healthy body must
lead to a better understanding of disease and an improvement of
our power of counteracting it, whether in the way of prevention,
alleviation, or cure.
In his address to the British Medical Association at Chester in
1866,[23] this eminent authority took occasion to protest forcibly
against the imputation of cruelty to animals sometimes made against
medical men in respect of physiological experiments. He insisted
both on the excessive difficulty of these original inquiries and
the high motives which actuate physiologists and the higher class
of scientific inquirers. “There should be no doubt,” said he, “as
to the free allowance of dissections of living creatures for the
advancement, and also for the communication, of a knowledge so
indispensable for our race, and for every generation of it.” He
practically charged the opponents of vivisection with stopping the
gates of knowledge, neither going in themselves nor suffering those
that were entering to go in.
The lofty view which Sir William Bowman takes of the surgeon’s
function may be gathered from an extract from the above-mentioned
address. “I see no reason to doubt that future ages will still accept
the pious saying of one of old, that surgery is the _Hands of God_;
the Human Hands, apt images and reflex of man’s whole being, from his
morning hour of puling helplessness, when the
“... tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast;”
through all his working day of time, until they shall be upraised
once more at last in joy and adoration, to hail a brighter and an
eternal dawning; the Human Hands, permitted now, through insight into
God’s laws, to be His instruments of succour to that earthly life and
organisation which His power, wisdom, and love have first brought
into being, still alone both sustain and cause to perish when their
part is played; to that material organisation which dies every hour
it lives, which indeed dies by living, and lives by dying, and which
wondrously transmits ever its own prerogatives and dark secrets to a
succeeding life, destined apparently to remain a marvel and a mystery
impenetrable to all generations.”
* * * * *
The career of Mr. R. BRUDENELL CARTER is of special interest, owing
to the fact that he was a general practitioner in the country till
the age of forty, and came to London in 1868 without friends or
connection, intending to establish himself as a specialist in eye
diseases, and in a few years attained to eminence. But Mr. Carter’s
life had been previously marked by energy and success of no common
order; and his literary tastes and accomplishments ranked in the
forefront of the causes of his success.
A reference to Mr. Carter’s ancestry will show that good hereditary
influences met and combined in him. His father was a major in the
royal marines; his grandfather, rector of Little Wittenham in
Berkshire, was a younger brother of Elizabeth Carter, the well-known
poetess and translator of Epictetus, whose portrait by Lawrence is
in the National Portrait Gallery. The rector was entirely educated
by his learned sister till he went to Cambridge. The rector’s wife
was a granddaughter of John Wallis, the mathematician and astronomer,
one of the founders of the Royal Society. The Carters belonged to the
younger branch of a family which had held the manor of St. Columb
Major in Cornwall from the time of Henry VII.
Mr. Carter was born, at Little Wittenham on October 2, 1828. After
being at private schools he commenced his professional education by
apprenticeship to a general practitioner, and afterwards entered
at the London Hospital. After becoming a member of the College of
Surgeons in 1851 he practised for a short time at Leytonstone and at
Putney.
At this period Mr. Carter published his first work “On the Pathology
and Treatment of Hysteria” (1853). This was avowedly based to a
considerable extent upon the opinions and practice of Mr. Stephen
Mackenzie, then recently deceased, who was extensively known by his
successful treatment of the most inveterate hysterical disorders.
This work in itself sufficiently indicated the presence of a writer
possessing both clearness of view and moderation of statement.
This was followed by a much more extensive treatise “On the Influence
of Education and Training in Preventing Diseases of the Nervous
System” (1855). Mr. Carter was led to write it by observing the
frequent connection between faulty education and nervous or mental
disorders. It is divided into three parts, dealing respectively
with the Nervous System, Physical Education, and Moral Education.
The latter was that for the sake of which the book was written;
it displays a thoughtful moderation and breadth of view, without,
however, forecasting the author’s future eminence.
Immediately upon the completion of this book Mr. Carter started
for the Crimea, where he served with the army as staff-surgeon.
Returning home when peace was concluded, he settled in
Nottinghamshire, and soon moving into the town of Nottingham, took an
active part in the establishment of an eye hospital there. In 1862
he removed to Stroud in Gloucestershire, and founded an eye hospital
in Gloucester. In 1864 Mr. Carter became Fellow of the College of
Surgeons by examination.
In 1868 Mr. Carter took the important step of removing to London,
resolving to rely upon medical and other literary work mainly until
practice should come. Thus Mr. Carter has been the writer of very
voluminous contributions to journalism, and has shown great ease and
lucidity of style. In 1869 he was appointed Surgeon to the Royal
South London Ophthalmic Hospital, and in 1870 Ophthalmic Surgeon to
St. George’s Hospital. He has persevered in commenting severely upon
errors of modern education, and has especially dealt with evils done
in various ways to the eyes in modern life. One pamphlet of his, “On
the Artificial Production of Stupidity in Schools,” has been often
reprinted. In an address at the opening of the Medical Session at St.
George’s in 1873 Mr. Carter thus spoke of cramming: “The show pupils,
who furnish marvellous answers to a multiplicity of questions, on
a multiplicity of subjects, in response to the demands of various
preliminary or matriculation examinations, remind me of nothing so
much as of the wooden cannon which artillerymen call ‘Quakers,’ which
require for their production in unlimited numbers, besides the
blocks of wood, nothing but a turning-lathe and a paint-brush; and
which are mounted, to deceive the enemy, in embrasures that would
otherwise be vacant.... But our ‘competition wallahs,’ instead of
being used to deceive an enemy, have been used chiefly to deceive
ourselves.”
In 1875 Mr. Carter published an extended and important “Practical
Treatise on Diseases of the Eye.” In this he distinctly states that
in its normal condition the eye has faults which would condemn a
telescope or microscope to be thrown aside as useless, but which in
the living organ are neutralised by the conditions under which it
is exerted. He recommends any one who would operate upon the eye to
take a great deal of preliminary trouble, and to train his hands to
especial delicacy of action, so that he shall be indifferent which he
uses. “It has more than once been my lot,” he says, “to see attempts
to operate upon the human eye made by a surgeon who did not even
know how to hold the instruments he was about to misuse; and I can
conceive few things more painful than such a spectacle.” “In all
ages and countries the bad workman has complained of his tools, and
the good workman has produced the most varied results by the most
simple means. A man who is very awkward, and whose awkwardness is
perpetually bringing him to grief, hits upon a contrivance by which
he hopes that this natural result may in some degree be obviated. He
calls his contrivance an invention; and, like those persons of whom
it is said that their glory is in their shame, he is often somewhat
proud of it. Many surgeons of great and deserved repute have invented
each a single instrument, such as Beer’s knife or Tyrrell’s hook; and
some have invented more than one, chiefly because they have struck
out some new procedure for which new appliances were indispensable.
But as a rule the invention of many instruments by a surgeon may be
accepted as a sufficient proof of his clumsiness; and when, without
valid reason, any single operator has his peculiar scissors, and his
peculiar hook, and his peculiar forceps, and his peculiar scoop, all
called after his name, it is more than probable that the gift of
fingers has not been bestowed upon him.”
Mr. Carter in 1877 gave a course of lectures “on Defects of Vision
which are Remediable by Optical Appliances,” as Hunterian Professor
of Pathology and Surgery at the College of Surgeons. These were
published in the same year. He has since issued a more popular work,
“Eyesight—Good and Bad: a Treatise on the Exercise and Preservation
of Vision,” 1880. The following extract has to do with a very
injurious form of prejudice due to ignorance.
“The persons who suffer most from popular prejudice and ignorance
on the subject of spectacles are men of the superior artisan class,
who are engaged on work which requires good eyesight, and who, at
the age of fifty or sixty, find their power of accomplishing such
work is diminishing. It is a rule in many workshops that spectacles
are altogether prohibited, the masters ignorantly supposing them
to be evidences of bad sight; whereas the truth is that they are
not evidences of bad sight at all, but only of the occurrence of a
natural and inevitable change, the effects of which they entirely
obviate, leaving the sight as good for all purposes as it ever was.”
His general interest in education and its effects is abundantly
manifested as in the description of the late Mr. C. Paget’s half-time
experiment at Ruddington near Nottingham, where garden work was
substituted for about half the ordinary school hours of a portion of
the scholars. The children so treated were found after a short period
altogether to outstrip in their schoolwork those who devoted, or were
supposed to devote, twice as much time to it.
Mr. Carter has translated two valuable works bearing on his
specialty: viz., Zander on the Ophthalmoscope, and Scheffler on
Ocular Defects. He has contributed to “Our Homes, and How to Make
them Healthy,” to the Sydenham Society’s _Biennial Retrospect of
Medicine_, and to many other publications.
* * * * *
Aural surgery has not long been raised to the rank of an honoured
specialty. JOSEPH TOYNBEE was told on one occasion by an eminent
member of the profession that he would make nothing of aural surgery.
He replied, “I will work at it for ten years, and then if nothing can
be made of it, I will tell you why.” On another occasion he said,
“I’ll rescue aural surgery from the hands of the quacks” (_Medical
Times_, July 14, 1866). Prematurely cut off though he was, he added
largely to the scientific knowledge of the ear and its maladies, and
vastly improved their treatment.
JOSEPH TOYNBEE was born in 1815, at Heckington, in Lincolnshire,
his father having been a large farmer. After being for some years
under a private tutor at home, he went to King’s Lynn Grammar
School. At seventeen he was apprenticed to Mr. William Wade of the
Westminster General Dispensary, Soho, and studied anatomy under Mr.
Dermott. His assiduous and careful dissections were of essential
benefit in preparing him for his lifelong minute dissections of
the ear in health and disease. He further studied at St. George’s
and at University College hospitals. Even during his student life
aural studies powerfully attracted him, and as early as 1836 several
letters of his under the initials J. T. appeared in the _Lancet_.
In 1838 he became a member of the College of Surgeons, and was
selected as assistant-curator of its museum under Professor Owen. He
obtained the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1842 for researches
demonstrating the non-vascularity of articular cartilage, the cornea,
crystalline lens, vitreous humour, and epidermoid appendages, which
were published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1841.
Toynbee early entered upon aural practice in Argyll Place,
becoming also one of the surgeons to the St. James’s and St.
George’s Dispensary. He was included in the first list of Fellows
of the College of Surgeons on the issue of its new charter. At
the Dispensary he founded a Samaritan Fund for supplying the sick
poor with necessaries of life and warmth. All sanitary matters
were subjects of his profound interest, and he spent much time
in improving the condition of things in the parishes around him,
especially promoting means of securing adequate ventilation, and the
erection of model lodging-houses near Broad Street, Golden Square.
Toynbee’s practice gradually became very large, but he continued to
dissect, and also to support administratively as well as pecuniarily
many benevolent societies. He found that so little was really known
of the diseases of the ear from actual dissection, that his only hope
of framing a system of aural surgery was by personal and persevering
examination and record of morbid specimens. This was carried on for
more than twenty years, until he had dissected about 2000 human ears.
Many of these were derived from his patients in the large Asylum for
the Deaf and Dumb, whose condition he had examined previously to
their death. Many medical men also supplied him with specimens of
diseased ears, as well as notes of cases. He further inquired closely
into the history of very many cases of patients with diseased ears.
In 1860 Toynbee published an extended work on “The Diseases of the
Ear,” which placed the subject on a firm basis, and will always
remain of great value from the interesting details of cases and
treatment which it contains. The list of his own published papers
on which it is based, about sixty in number, testifies to Toynbee’s
great industry in research. They include papers on the structure and
functions of the tympanic membrane, on the muscles which open the
Eustachian tube, and on the mode of conduction of sound from the
tympanic membrane to the labyrinth of the ear, contributed to the
Royal Society, many researches on the diseases of the ear in the
Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, and a crowd of series of cases or
special memoirs contributed to the Pathological Society and medical
journals. In 1857 he had published a descriptive catalogue of the
preparations illustrating diseases of the ear contained in his own
museum.
On the establishment of St. Mary’s Hospital, Mr. Toynbee was elected
aural surgeon and lecturer on diseases of the ear; and he published
in 1855 and 1856 courses of clinical lectures, which he delivered
there. He took a deep interest in the condition of idiots, and of the
deaf and dumb, and in many cases, to his great delight, devised plans
by which those who were not totally deaf were taught to speak when
their case had been regarded as hopeless, causing a corresponding
improvement in their mental faculties.
Two of his most zealously pursued hobbies were ventilation, and
the formation of local museums. It was said that patients who went
to him for the benefit of their hearing, whether they improved in
that respect or not, came away full of the most advanced views
on ventilation. At Wimbledon, where he took a country-house, he
was indefatigable in developing a village club, and in forming an
educative and recreative museum. He published valuable “Hints on the
Formation of Local Museums” (1863), as well as “Wimbledon Museum
Notes.” His enthusiastic advocacy was actively engaged in furthering
the establishment of similar clubs and museums in various parts of
the kingdom. He continued through life an active microscopist and
zoologist, and was elected just before his death President of the
Quekett (Microscopical) Club. At the same time he was treasurer of
the Medical Benevolent Club, to which he himself largely contributed.
One of Toynbee’s most valuable contributions to the treatment of
deafness was his invention of a method of forming an artificial
tympanic membrane when that part had been destroyed or perforated.
This is fully described in his pamphlet on the subject, which went
through many editions, as well as in his general treatise. He first
demonstrated the existence of many osseous and other tumours of the
parts of the ear and of the ossicles of the tympanum, and also the
fact that the Eustachian tube leading from the back of the throat
into the tympanum remains always closed except during the momentary
act of swallowing.
A premature end came to Toynbee’s energetic and benevolent life.
Always active in experimental research, and much concerned in
aural therapeutics, he experimented on himself with chloroform,
and it is believed, prussic acid vapour, which he wished to cause
to enter by the Eustachian tube into the tympanum for the relief
of tinnitus aurium or noises in the ears. He unfortunately pursued
his experiments while alone, and was found dead on July 7, 1866, in
his consulting room at Savile Row, with a pad of cotton wool over
his face, and chloroform and prussic acid bottles, his open watch,
and various memoranda of experiments near him. His death excited
universal sympathy for Mr. Toynbee’s widow and nine children, with
whom he had lived most happily.
* * * * *
If one great aural surgeon became a martyr of science, another was no
less a martyr of philanthropy. The name of JAMES HINTON, which gained
wide celebrity during his lifetime, has been progressively elevated
since his death by the publication of his “Life and Letters,” by Miss
Ellice Hopkins, and of his works on “The Art of Thinking,” 1879,
“Philosophy and Religion,” 1881, and “The Law-Breaker, and the Coming
of the Law,” 1884. Even yet, fortunately, much more may be hoped for,
in the shape more especially of an autobiography, and of a work on
Ethics.
It has become increasingly evident that James Hinton was, if not
a true genius, a man who approached very nearly to that altitude
of nature. As Mr. Shadworth Hodgson remarks in the introduction to
the “Chapters on the Art of Thinking,” Hinton is a hander-on of
Coleridge’s torch, with less of systematic theology and more of
emotional spiritualism. It is quite impossible to attempt here to
sketch his various philosophical contributions. Indeed the time has
not yet fully come to estimate them, their influence, or the man who
gave birth to them. As an aural surgeon he perhaps scarcely rose to
Toynbee’s level, but this was rather because the greatness of his
mind and soul in vaster fields overpowered him, than from defect of
ability. An outline of his life and work only can here be given.
James Hinton was the third child (of eleven) of the well-known
Baptist minister, John Howard Hinton, having been born at Reading in
1822. His father’s mother was aunt to Isaac Taylor, the author of
the “Natural History of Enthusiasm.” It was from his mother, Eliza
Birt, however, that James Hinton derived most. She is described as a
fervent, lofty-souled woman, full of enthusiasm and compassion, yet
dignified and able to rule others with mild but irresistible sway.
As a little child, James Hinton, though sweet-tempered, showed a
strong tendency to investigate everything, and to rearrange the
elder children’s games “as they ought to be.” The father taught the
children to be keenly observant of natural history. The mother bred
them up to have an instinctive feeling for religion, especially in
its aspect of love to God. An elder brother, Howard, died when James
was but twelve, and this bereavement made such an impression upon him
that he soon after was baptized and publicly received as a member of
the Baptist Church.
At school James Hinton did not show special ability, though he had
a remarkable verbal memory until a certain period, when he suddenly
lost it without any special cause. In 1838 his father left Reading
for London, becoming minister of the Devonshire Square Chapel.
Feeling some pressure of circumstances with his large family, Mr.
Hinton placed James in the first situation which presented itself,
viz., that of cashier at a wholesale woollen-draper’s shop in
Whitechapel. This temporary immersion in proximity to some of the
coarsest scenes imaginable had a very deep influence in educing the
thoroughgoing altruism which afterwards characterised him.
After holding the Whitechapel situation about a year, and spending
some time in search of a more suitable occupation, Hinton became a
clerk in an insurance office in the city. Here, while not becoming
an adept at book-keeping, he sat up at night and gave himself a
miscellaneous education. At this time he has been described as
“an abstract idea untidily expressed;” he was wholly indifferent
to appearances, and his clothes could never be made to fit him;
and he was often guilty of lapses from politeness. He was full of
argumentativeness, and determined to get to the bottom of everything.
A little later his intense intellectual labours, combined with the
deep sense he now and ever after entertained of the wrongs to which
women were subjected, brought him into a state of mind in which he
resolved to run away to sea. His intention being discovered, his
father consulted a doctor about him, who wisely advised that he
should enter the medical profession, as being more fitted to give
scope for his mental powers. He was consequently entered at St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital at the age of twenty. He was able to perform
his entire course of medical study with very great rapidity, and
before taking his diploma went on a voyage to China and back as
surgeon of a passenger ship. On his return in 1847 be became a member
of the College of Surgeons, and settled for a time as a surgeon’s
assistant at Newport in Essex.
He did not remain here long, but in the autumn of 1847 took the
position of surgeon to a shipload of freed slaves who were to be
shipped by voluntary agreement from Sierra Leone to Jamaica. He
remained for more than a year after this in Jamaica, taking the
practice of a medical man in ill-health, and looking after the
progress of his late charges. In 1849-50 he travelled homewards by
way of New Orleans, where he gained further insight into the slavery
question. In 1850 he entered into partnership with a Mr. Fisher, a
surgeon in general practice in Bartholomew Close; and became engaged
to Miss Margaret Haddon, after an attachment of ten years.
In August 1850 we find the first note of his success in aural
surgery; he cured his mother’s deafness by a syringing properly
performed. Some other cases of success followed this, and were very
cheering. Soon after this he was introduced to Mr. Toynbee, and spent
much time with him both at St. Mary’s Hospital and privately. Yet
he did not find anything in practice large enough to satisfy his
aspirations. “Too many things crowd upon me; none _commands_ me,”
he writes March 1851. “The thing which shall fill my heart must be
not for myself but for others. To be contented I must toil not for
comfort, nor money, nor for fame, nor for love, but for truth and
righteousness.”
In 1852 Hinton’s marriage with Miss Haddon took place, one of
singularly deep affection. He was now in practice for himself,
finding general practice not very profitable, especially as he
would not condescend to use arts to obtain success. He continued
his study of aural surgery, and assisted Mr. Toynbee largely in the
classification of his museum, already alluded to.
In 1856 Hinton published his earliest papers on physiology and ethics
in the _Christian Spectator_. In 1858 he contributed an essay to the
_Medico-Chirurgical Review_ on “Physical Morphology,” suggesting that
organic growth takes place in the direction of least resistance—a
conception utilised by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his “First Principles.”
In 1859 “Man and his Dwelling-place” was published and favourably
received. Its success encouraged him to lay aside practice, reduce
his expenses to a minimum, and take to writing as a profession. He
settled in a little house at Tottenham, where his sitting-room was of
such dimensions that he used to say he could open the door with one
hand, poke the fire with the other, and had nature given him a third,
open the window with it, without rising from his seat.
At first success attended the venture. Thackeray accepted for the
_Cornhill Magazine_ the series of “Physiological Riddles,” with the
remark “Whatever else this fellow can do, he can write!” These were
afterwards published, with others, under the title “Life in Nature.”
“Thoughts on Health” were also contributed to the _Cornhill_. But his
mind continued in such activity of growth, ever full, ever changing,
that he had not time to write his thoughts in form for publication,
and he was forced back into practice, which he had not quite
renounced, continuing to see a few aural patients twice a week at
his father’s house. In 1863 he was appointed aural surgeon to Guy’s
Hospital, and took a house in George Street, Hanover Square, for the
purpose of aural practice. With heroic and costly resolution, knowing
he could not adequately do his work as an aural surgeon and devote
himself to philosophy, he locked his manuscripts away from his sight.
Henceforward he rapidly succeeded in practice. In 1866 he took the
place vacated by the death of his valued friend Toynbee, removing to
his house in Savile Row. When in full practice, and not allowing
himself to write, his chief life was in conversation. A few lines may
be here quoted from Miss Hopkins’ Life of Hinton. “It is difficult to
give any adequate idea of the charms of Mr. Hinton’s conversation to
a mind at all in harmony with his own. His most marked peculiarity
was the intensely emotional character of his intellect. Nature to him
was no cold abstraction, no cunningly contrived machine made up of
matter and force, but a mighty spiritual presence, a living being,
tenderly and passionately beloved. The laws of nature were to him the
habits of a dear and intimate friend.... But keen as was his delight
in purely intellectual operations, he valued everything chiefly,
if not only, in its relation to the moral.... How often, from some
comparatively remote region of thought, or of art, would he flash
down a light upon some practical matter, showing perhaps a neglected
duty in its vital relations, or revealing an order in what looked
like moral waste and confusion. Owing to this strong recognition of
the spiritual unity of all life, never was there a man in whom the
barrier between the religious and the secular was more completely
effaced.”
In 1869 his success in aural surgery was so assured, that an eminent
surgeon suggested to Mr. Hinton that he might justifiably resume his
philosophy as an evening recreation. So after six years’ abstinence
he resumed his writing. But his thoughts, allowed once more to spring
into full activity, were certain to master him. “Wherever he was, at
a friend’s house, in the street, at church, at a concert, he jotted
down his notes on scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, bills, and
programmes, writing them out in full in the evening.” Finally, these
thoughts were printed for his own private use, and from them a great
portion of his posthumous works is derived.
At last he had made money enough by practice to retire. His parting
gift to his profession was contained in “The Questions of Aural
Surgery,” a work of standard value; and his “Atlas of Diseases
of the Membrana Tympani.” In March 1874 he retired, but with a
constitution deeply injured by overwork and excess of feeling and
thought. His father had died the year before; his mother died in
1874. He continued incessantly working, writing, thinking, studying
mankind in the streets and alleys of London, or in the colliers’
cottages in South Wales, and came to suffer much from sleeplessness.
When he set sail in the autumn of 1875 for the Azores, where Mrs.
Hinton had preceded him, he was already seriously ill. At last he
was seized with inflammation of the brain, and died on December 16,
1875, a martyr to his intense passion for the good of mankind. Of
his intellectual, ethical, and religious views this is not the place
to speak at large; his books must be left to explain themselves to
kindred spirits.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Reprinted by the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by
Research, 1882.