While in Spring Gardens—this was in 1860—I got together my researches
on “The Bones in Scrofula,” which Dr. Baly presented to the
Medico-Chirurgical Society, before which it was read, and a very full
abstract of it was published in their “Proceedings,” and in all the
medical journals of the day.
Lord Goderich, a young man of great promise, then member for one of the
Yorkshire Ridings, succeeded his father in the House of Lords, very
unwillingly, as he liked the Commons better, and he humorously declared
himself disfranchised. Three months later his uncle, Earl de Grey, died,
whose title he took, and he then became sole owner of Studley Royal,
which before him belonged to the two brothers.
Lord Goderich was married to a young lady who, to save time, I may say
was possessed of every charm—animation, beauty, simplicity, humour, a
hearty ringing laugh—and these shaped themselves into countless groups,
all equally pleasing.
Now that I am unable to visit her, I have her promise of seeing her yet
again, from time to time, and this alone is enough to keep me alive.
The present earl, now Marquis of Ripon, soon became a useful public
servant under Lord Palmerston, as an under-secretary, first of the Local
Government Board, then of the India Office, and rose ultimately to be
Viceroy of India, by the Queen’s express wish, her Majesty having known
him when he was a child, and the playmate of the Prince of Wales. He has
always been in sympathy with the classes beneath him, and his strictly
conscientious character affords the clue to every action of his life.
He is a descendant both of Hampden and Cromwell. The head representative
of the Cromwell family was Mr. Field, in my time the apothecary to
Christ’s Hospital; the next is the Count of Palavicini, of Genoa; and
then comes the Marquis of Ripon.
The Fields, I believe, are the same as those of Ozokerit fame.
In London I frequented the laboratory of my old friend, Dr. Marcet, at
the Westminster Hospital, where he was the chemical professor; and I
attended the meetings of the Chemical Society, which I belonged to, and
there met again Dr. Faraday, whose lectures I had followed in early life.
I had met him, too, at Brighton, at a scientific meeting. He was then
asked to say something by way of an address, which he did, but told us
that he was so accustomed to speak with apparatus in his hands, that he
found it difficult to say anything without it. At that time I met Mr.
Davies Gilbert. Seated by him and talking with him on the advanced state
of knowledge, he remarked that all that was known of the sciences in his
early days was contained in Boyle’s Dictionary. This was at a dinner
given to the great geologist, Gideon Mantell.
During my visit to America, I read before a medical society at Boston a
paper “On Vital Force, its Pulmonic Origin, and the General Laws of its
Metamorphosis.” It was founded on a lecture that I delivered in 1853 at
Bury, at the Young Men’s Institution, of which I was the president. This
paper, which showed that carbon was the element out of which this force
arose during its combustion at the lungs, was published in an American
journal in 1854, and republished in London. This I mention because I was
the first to take that view. Mayer saw it later, and I think has all the
credit of it. I added to this republication some scientific views of
interest, especially one on the water of organization.
While on these subjects I may as well mention that, between the years
1839 and 1853, I contributed largely to the medical press; my papers
are noted from time to time in the Directory of those years. In one
series that I gave to the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal of the
Association, then edited by Dr. Streeter, “A Critical Analysis of the
Principal Facts of Disease,” I showed by elaborate experiments that the
movement of the blood in the capillary vessels was due to the spinal
nerves, and not to the great sympathetic.
In the same series I pointed out the importance of taking the temperature
of the body, internal and external, in disease, and constructed tables
for noting the variations, and this at a time (about 1840 or 1841) when
the thermometer had not come into use in medical practice.
I would allude here to a physiological inquiry made by me, and which
occupied much of my time for twenty years or more, on a grammatical
subject, that of the sequence of sound in speech, with the laws of
diphthongism and accent.
There is another work I would make a record of, it is unpublished, “A New
Cosmogony.”
Stray papers, published or unpublished, I need hardly note, except one
on Drapery, which sculptors and artists would do well to study. It was
published not so very long ago in _Merry England_, a monthly magazine.
I have already alluded to the resuscitation of my work on Varicose
Capillaries by the Pathological Society; it had been in a state of
suspended animation for fifty-one years.