"Hotel Dieu."-The House of God; the name of an Hospital.

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'Physicians, when they have found out the cause of disease consider they have found out the cure."-CICERO.

"Medicines are not meant to feed on."-PROVERB.

THE LATE DR. WILSON: WITH SOME REMARKS ABOUT EMINENT MEDICAL MEN.

"The spirit of medicine is easy to master; you study through the great and little worlds to let it go in the end as God pleases."-GOETHE.

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree, and. soundest casuists doubt, like you and me."-POPE.

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too."-SHAKESPEARE.

"He who cures a disease may be the skilfullest, but he that prevents it is the safest physician.”—T. FULLER.

At the Pendleton Town Hall, on Thursday evening, February 13th, 1896, Mr. Thomas Costley delivered the ninth of a series of lectures, tbe subject being "The late Dr. Wilson," of Pendleton, with some remarks about eminent medical men. At the commencement Dr. Bailey occupied the chair.

The CHAIRMAN said: Though I cannot claim to have known the late Dr. Wilson, yet, having taken his practice, I have had plenty of opportunities of hearing what his patients and friends thought about him. I could not help being struck by hearing how much they admired and respected him. All classes of his late patients, rich and poor, seem to have had the highest regard and respect for him. Mr. Costley, to-night, is to give us a lecture on the late doctor, and I am sure no one is better qualified than he to do this, seeing that he was such an old friend of Dr. Wilson.

Mr. COSTLEY said: At the outset I should like to observe that fifteen years have rolled away since I first became acquainted with Dr. Wilson. I called upon him on business, and was at once taken up with him. The more we came to know each other the better we liked each other. I must say that a more genuine, a more earnest, and a more trustworthy friend, I have never had. In season and out of season he studied the welfare of those who, in their sickness, God had placed under his care. He was always thinking of his patients, except when he was drowned in sleep. Dr. Wilson had some of those fine characteristics so beautifully described by John Ruskin in "Unto this Last," which he contributed to the Cornhill Magazine. In that contribution Ruskin refers to the professions, and compares them with merchants. Ruskin says the professions will do something for nothing, but that the merchants will not do anything for nothing. They

want their commission or their profit on every transaction. However, the editor of the Cornhill wrote to Ruskin, informing him that he must not send any more similar contributions to that magazine, on the ground that many letters of complaint had been received from readers, who threatened to discontinue subscribing to the periodical if any more such articles appeared in its columns. Ruskin then commenced to publish himself. In other papers that author said that a lawyer-as bad as many people thought he was-would take up and work out a case for the love of it, before he gets paid for it. Ruskin says that a soldier will fight for his Queen and country, although he knows he is not being paid for the sacrifice of his life. The same author says of a medical man, that he will go his round, and study his patients, and try to cure them for the love that he has for the patients themselves. He knows, as sure as night follows day, that many of his patients will not pay him for his skill and labour. Dr. Wilson was one of those. He went into districts and into houses that I know very well, and the doctor knew he would never get paid for his services. Still he gave as much attention to every patient as though he would be paid in solid money. profession which includes in its membership such men as the late Dr. Wilson is a noble profession-in fact, the nobility of the profession can be proved by the services of a very large number of distinguished medical men. Many-very many-of these men have also distinguished themselves in literature, science, and art.

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We have had medical men who have been poets, others statesmen, and others who have been oratorsorators of no uncertain sound-orators of a fine, splendid type, in nearly every age of the world's history. I feel thankful that Dr. Wilson, although he was not a man of any great literary ability, had an admiration for everything that was great and noble. It was the nobler portion of the medical profession to which I have no hesitation in saying Dr. Wilson belonged. I know well that in Pendleton and the district there are many who have almost tasted the bitterness of death, but have been cured by the deceased doctor. As I told you at the outset, when I first went to see Dr. Wilson it was on a matter of business. The Doctor said to me, "Well, you want more for doing your work than is asked by the gentleman who has just left me." I said "Doctor, if a man does work he ought to be well paid for it, and I cannot undertake the work in question unless I am well paid for my labour." After some correspondence, the doctor decided to entrust the work to me, because, as he subsequently explained, he thought I should serve

him better than the other person. There is a friendship apart from business-a friendship which business cannot make or destroy. It is not money or property that creates friendship, but two loving spirits. (Applause.) I say that true friendship is as immortal as God himself, and as perfectly a true friendship existed between Dr. Wilson and myself as ever existed between David and Jonathan. It was thought by some people that Dr. Wilson sneered at religion, and cared nothing for it. I know he didn't like what you may call the priest that loved money and wealth. He liked a priest-I speak of priests generally-who was after the style of Chaucer's parson of the town; of Goldsmith's parson in "The Deserted Village," or of Tennyson's parson in "The May Queen.' clergyman had not the characteristics of those parsons, he didn't like them, as I know you don't.

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It has been claimed for the medical profession that the union of the functions of doctor and priest was a normal trait in early societies, the priest being the recognised doctor in some nationalities, as we know the medicinal effects wrought by plants were originally attributed to the spirits dwelling in them, and the medicine men of uncivilised people have always combated disease by driving out evil spirits as well as by the application of natural remedies. I consider, however, that the physician originated from the priest properly so-called, who dealt with ghosts, not antagonistically, but sympathetically. Doubtless a close connection existed from very early times between medical treatment and the belief in the efficiency of supernatural means for the cure of disease, and indeed, save among the most civilised peoples, it still, to some extent, continues. The great philosophical poet, Lucretius, imagines and describes for us the first rude attempts of prehistoric man to repair the injuries received in conflict with_wild beasts, according to Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Latin physician, who lived about the year 50 of our era, and wrote on medicine. The most backward tribes have never been without their remedies for wounds

and general ailments. The healing art, he says, is coeval and coextensive with humanity; but of its great divisions, surgery and medicine, the former was incomparably the earlier, and in practise the more effective. The Israelites were in medical practice followers of the Egyptians, and with the priesthood attended to the sick. Cleanliness was the distinctive note of their medicine, till from the Egyptians it became merged in the Greek, and later in the Arabian.

Pythagoras and other philosophers mixed up a little practical medicine with their speculative doc

trines. At the end of the sixth century we hear of a famous Greek physician, Democedes, curing the king of Persia when the Egyptian physicians failed, and at the end of the fifth century a Greek, Ktesias, was physician to the Persian court, and Hippocrates wrote his famous works. Of those who in earliest times exercised the healing art in Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicea, India, and China, we know nothing. In Chaldea, in the 7th century B.C., it would appear that charms and magic were chiefly depended upon, though medicines were given. Moreover, if the supernatural method of healing were in the domain of the priest, it would be only natural that he should likewise take upon himself the use of natural remedies also, the more so because he would often have special opportunities of acquiring all the known information concerning natural remedies. However, I will, without further preface, again proceed to speak of the gentleman whose name appears in the title of my lecture.

The late Dr. Wilson, who must have been known to many of my hearers, was the son of Professor Wilson, D.D., of Belfast. Educated at Queen's College, the deceased gentleman rapidly acquired his degree of M.D. and other distinctions. About 25 years ago he commenced practice and established dispensaries in co. Derry, which he carried on for some years. Removing to Loughborough, in Leicestershire, he established himself for a time prior to removing to Pendleton, about 15 years ago. He had achieved celebrity as a medical author, and was the writer of a series of notes on the hospital treatment of skindiseases a subject in which he had taken a deep interest, accentuated during a voyage to Africa on a steamship of which he was the medical officer. Caring little for the general run of public matters, his whole time was devoted to the welfare of the patients under his care, as I have said before, to whom, very often, he gave an amount of attention in inverse proportion to their powers of payment. His medical skill was so often in requisition by the late coroner, Mr. F. Price, that Dr. Wilson became familiarly known as "the Coroner's Medical Officer." For many years he discharged this duty, and among the celebrated cases with which his name is associated, is that of the Pendleton murder case, some years ago. His evidence was invariably reduced to written form with care and precision. Despite the absence of that suavity of demeanour common to nearly all medical men, the late Dr. Wilson had a fund of pungent wit, which he frequently brought into play in the sick room. He had a budget of humour at hand to distribute at will to chase away the pain of