No. 61. To JANUARY 1, 1821. VOL. VI. OF ANTHONY CARLISLE, Esq. F. R. S. F. A. S. Surgeon Extraordinary to the King, Surgeon to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester and to the Westminster Infirmary, and Professor of Anatomy to the Royal Academy. THIS able anatomist is descended from an antient noble family of Scotland, one of whom (Sir James Carlisle) married Miss Margaret Bruce, whose ancestors obtained a peerage, with the barony of Torthorald. The professor's father possessed a family estate at Hellington, near Stockton-upon-Tees. His professional education commenced with a maternal uncle in the city of York, which was soon transferred, in consequence of his uncle's death, to Mr. Green, surgeon in ordinary to the General Infirmary of Durham, an hospital which affords a field for experience and observation equal to any in the United Kingdom. At the age of 28, he came to London to finish his professional education, under the illustrious John Hunter, with whom he became so great a favourite, that he soon offered him the superintendance of his museum, and the appointment of demonstrator in his dissecting room, which his friends advised him to decline. The professor was afterwards appointed assistant surgeon to the Westminster Hospital, to which he became surgeon in ordinary, on the death of Mr. Henry Watson. About seven years ago, he succeeded the late Mr. Shelden, as Professor of Anatomy to the Royal Academy of London, to the appointment of which even his opponents acknowledged that his anatomical knowledge and taste gave him a superior claim. This situation he has long filled with great credit to himself, and justice to that noble institution. Here the professor has to take a view of the human body, very different to that which is generally taken by surgical lecturers on anatomy: instead of merely noticing the structure or various functions, he has to point out the beauties and deformities of each part, to shew the nice adjointment and symmetry of the whole, or to impress on the minds of the students the foundation of the graphic art on just principles. If we were to judge from the approbation of the public, he has completely succeeded in discharging this, certainly, very nice and difficult duty. The professor is the author of many articles in the transactions of the Royal, the Antiquarian, Linnæau, and Horticultural Societies, as well as in the medical periodical journals, which do him credit as a man of science, and as what may be termed in our times, a rara avis in terra," a professional man of liberal sentiments, as a proof of which it is only necessary to refer to his celebrated address to the surgeonapothecaries of England, which appeared about the year 1815. VOL, VI. 3 с The professor's numerous scientific communications, prove indisputably not only that he is a man of varied information, but that in his investigations he does not pursue the beaten track; he has displayed that originality of thinking which infallibly points out superior genius; such a man never condescends to the mean arts of practice, which have disgraced many of his cotemporaries, and reduced the profession in the opinion of men of discernment, below the meanest mechanic, even of a Cooper, or a shoemaker. MIND AND MATTER.-The nature of the reasoning principle of man, and the influence of the mind on the body, are become very favourite subjects of investigation with the lecturers to the London College of Surgeons. The opposite opinions of Messrs. A bernethy and Lawrance respecting the materiality and immateriality of the soul, we have already noticed. Mr. James Wilson, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the College, Lecturer and Surgeon at the Hunterian School, in Great Windmill-street, a gentleman of great experience and sound judgment, prefaced the lecture he lately delivered at the college, on the human skeleton and diseases of the bones and joints, with some observations on this favourite topic, which many of his hearers considered, from the dryness of the subject, not altogether unconnected with the skeleton." We are convinced," said the professor," that there is a principle within us, which feels, which thinks, which reasons, which makes us acquainted with external objects, and from which the original source of all our voluntary actions seems to be derived. We know that this principle has a system of laws peculiar to itself; but equally regular and certain with the other laws of nature; we know that in consequence of its union with the body certain effects are produced, which none of the other laws of nature, so far as we are yet acquainted with theni, or with the effect produced by them, will enable us to explain. Numerous occurrences convince us that this principle acts constantly and powerfully on the body by the intervention of the brain and nerves; but how or in what mauner, we know nothing certain. The abilities of many of the most celebrated anatomists and physiologists of the past age and of the present, have been exerted to obtain more information on this important subject; very many animals have been sacrificed as victims in this pursuit, and some new facts have been lately ascertained; still many opinions remain which are neither confirmed so as to be established, nor absolutely confuted, so as to be rejected. For the most important of these facts we are indebted to the experiments of Bichot, Le Gallois, and others. The result of these experiments, and the opinions founded on them, have been so ably arranged and narrated by Doctor Cooke in the Croonian lectures, delivered by him last year at the Royal College of Physicians, and since published, that I need only refer you to the work, as containing a sufficiently ample abstract of what has been yet achieved by ancient and modern discoverers; and strongly feeling the justice and force of his concluding observation on the nature and uses of the nervous system, I shall take the liberty to quote it here: he says, of the ultimate nature or essence, either of mind or atter, or of that compound which we call the nervous system, we |