522
former city, where his reputation as a surgical ope-
rator grew yearly, until he attained that pre-eminence
which left him without a rival. For this department,
indeed, he was admirably fitted by nature; for in-
dependently of his acquired skill, he possessed a
decision of will, firmness of nerve, strength of muscle,
and quickness of eye, which qualified him for suc-
cessful operations, where many of his gentler or less
prompt and active brethren would have failed. But
with all this, he was neither a rash experimenter nor
merciless practitioner: on the contrary, he not only
performed boldly and skilfully what was necessary,
but stopped short where danger was to be appre-
hended. His manner also combined such gentleness
with firmness, as secured the confidence and esteem
of his patients. In addition to his practice, he de-
livered lectures, first on anatomy, and afterwards on
surgery, between the years 1822 and 1834, which
were highly valued and numerously attended.
Having thus won for himself a high reputation
both as practitioner and instructor, it was natural
that Mr. Listen should anticipate those professional
honours which are so often bestowed upon candidates
of greatly inferior pretensions. His hopes were
directed to a professorship of surgery in the univer-
sity of Edinburgh, which no one in Scotland was
better (if as well) qualified to fill; but as the wished-
for vacancy did not occur, or was won by a more
favoured competitor, he formed a professorship for
himself, with the world for his auditory, by publish-
ing in 1833 his Principles of Surgery, a work which
he afterwards repeatedly revised, and which went
through several editions. Subsequently many of his
lectures on various subjects, and especially on litho-
tomy, were published in the Lancet. Of the merits
of these writings, which were recognized at once by
the whole medical profession, and which have spread
his fame through every medical school in Europe and
America, it would now be superfluous to speak;
their scientific correctness and thorough practical
character, as well as the improvements which they
have introduced into practical surgery, are sufficient
evidences of their worth. Disappointed in his hopes
of Edinburgh, and having fully tested his own powers,
Dr. Liston was now desirous of a wider field, which
was opened to him in 1834, by his being appointed
surgeon to the North London Hospital. He left the
Scottish capital in the November of that year; and
so fully was his value now appreciated in Edinburgh,
that before his departure a public dinner was given
to him, at which the lord-provost presided, while
the addresses delivered on the occasion by the most
eminent of the medical and surgical professions, who
attended, made eloquent acknowledgment of his high
talents and eminent services, as well as regret at their
transference to another sphere of action.
In London the fame of Dr. Liston became so
distinguished, that his private practice annually in-
creased, and the most difficult and critical operations
were reserved for his experienced hand. After hav-
ing filled for some time the office of surgeon to the
North London Hospital, he was appointed professor
of clinical surgery in University College; and in 1846,
in addition to that situation, which he raised to hon-
our and distinction, he was appointed one of the
examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons. In
this way, notwithstanding a certain bluntness of
manner which he had preserved from the beginning,
his private worth, as well as professional knowledge,
procured him not only the highest distinction in his
own country, but a world-wide reputation, which as
yet has suffered no abatement. Here, however, his
career was unexpectedly closed when it was at the
brightest. After enjoying almost uninterrupted good
health till within a year of his death, he was attacked
by a malady, the causes of which his medical advisers
could not ascertain, but which was found, on a post
mortem examination, to have been occasioned by
aneurism in the aorta. He died in Clifford Street,
London, on the 7th of December, 1847, at the age
of fifty-three.
LITHGOW, WILLIAM, a well-known traveller of
the seventeenth century, was born in the parish of
Lanark in the year 1583. Nothing is known of his
birth or parentage, or of the earlier period of his life.
He seems to have attracted very little general notice
prior to the publication of his travels in 1614; and
even the celebrity which these acquired for him does
not appear to have suggested any inquiry into his
previous history.
There is no reason, however, to believe otherwise
than that he was a person of rather mean condition
and poor circumstances, though evidently possessed
of an education very far surpassing what was common
among the vulgar at the period when he lived. The
motives which induced him to leave his native coun-
try to perform a painful and dangerous pilgrimage
through foreign lands, are not more obvious than
some of the other particulars of his early life. He
himself, in the strange and almost unintelligible
jargon in which he frequently indulges in the work
which records his adventures, obscurely assigns two:
the oppression of enemies—but who they were, or
what was the cause of their enmity, he does not say
—and an irresistible desire to visit strange lands.
It would indeed appear that this last was the ruling
passion of his life, and that, together with a roving,
unsettled, and restless disposition, it was the prin-
cipal agent in compelling him to undertake the
formidable journeys which he accomplished, and
enabled him to bear up with such a series of hard-
ships and bodily sufferings as perhaps no man ever
before or since has endured.
From the obscurity in which his early life is in-
volved, it is not therefore until he has assumed the
character which has procured him celebrity, namely,
that of a traveller, that Lithgow is introduced to us.
In his youth, while he was, as he himself says, yet
a stripling, he made two voyages to the "Orcadian
and Zetlandian Isles." Shortly after this he pro-
ceeded on a tour through Germany, Bohemia, Hel-
vetia, and the Low Countries. From the latter he
went to Paris, where he remained for ten months.
William Lithgow nowhere gives the slightest hint
regarding the source whence he derived the funds
necessary to defray the expenses of these journeys;
but there seems to be some reason for believing that
he trusted in a great measure to chance, and to the
casual assistance which he might receive from any of
his countrymen whom he might encounter in the
different places he visited. This applies only, how-
ever, to the first part of his career; the latter was
provided for by a piece of good fortune which shall
be noticed in its proper place.
On the 9th of March, 1609, Lithgow again started
from Paris on another roving expedition, and on
this occasion proceeded in the first instance directly
to Rome. He was escorted several miles on his way
by three or four of his countrymen, with whom he
had picked up an acquaintance while in Paris, and
who, not improbably, supported him during the time
of his residence in that city. These persons he de-
scribes as gentlemen, and one of them, at any rate,
certainly had a claim to this character on the score
of rank. This was Hay of Smithfield, Esq., of the
King of France's body-guard. Although thus asso-
ciating himself, however, with these gentlemen,