DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. WE little thought when, a few weeks ago, we in troduced some suggestions from Dr. Adams as to the propriety of instituting in our universities a chair of medical history, by calling him the most learned of Scottish physicians, that we should soon have to change 'is' into was. When we last saw him, though he looked older than his years, and weather-worn, he was full of vigour and of heart, and seemed to have in him many days of victorious study. To see so much energy and understanding cut sheer through in its full current, not dwindling away by natural waste, is little less startling than it would be to see his own silver and impetuous Dee, one moment rolling in ample volume, and the next vanished. For, common though it be, there is nothing more strange, nothing, in a certain true sense, more against nature, than the sudden extinguishment of so much intellect, knowledge, and force. Dr. Adams was not a mere scholar, not merely # patient, ingenious, and perspicacious in the study of language. His was likewise a robust, hardy, eager nature, hungering after knowledge of every sort, and in the structure of his mind and its bent more like the Scaligers and Bentleys of old than the mighty but mere word-mongers among the Germans. He was made of the same tough and fervid material as were George Buchanan and Florence Wilson, Andrew Melville, and the huge, turbulent,1 and intrepid Dempster, men who were great scholars, and a great deal more; shrewd, and full of public spirit, men of affairs as well as of letters. It is this intermixture of shrewdness and fervour with hard-headedness and patient endurance of mental toil, so peculiarly Scotch in its quality and in its. flavour, which makes a man like the country surgeon of Banchory-Ternan worthy of more than a passing notice. Francis Adams was born in the parish of Lumphanan on Deeside. His father was a gardener, and his elder brother is still a farmer in that parish. In a memorandum of his literary life now before 1 Here is this formidable worthy's portrait by Matthæus Peregrinus, as quoted by Dr. Irving in his Literary Scotchmen of the Last Four Centuries:-'Moribus ferox fuit, apertus omnino, et simulandi nescius, sive enim amore, sive odio aliquem prosequeretur utrumque palam; consuetudine jucundissimus, amicis obsequentissimus, ita inimicis maxime infensus, acceptæque injuriæ tenax, eam aperte agnoscens et repetens.' us, he says:-'As far as I can think, my classical bent was owing to a friendship which I formed, when about fifteen years old, with a young man a few years older than myself, who had enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education at Montrose, which gave him a superiority over myself that roused me to emulation. 'In my early years I had been shamefully mistaught. I began by devoting seventeen hours a day to the study of Virgil and Horace, and it will be readily believed that such intense application soon made up for any early deficiencies. 'I read each of these six or seven times in succession. Having mastered the difficulties of Latin literature, I naturally turned my attention to Greek as being the prototype of the other. 'It was the late Dr. Kerr of Aberdeen who drew my attention to the Greek literature of medicine, and at his death I purchased a pretty fair collection of the Greek medical authors which he had made. However, I have also read almost every Greek work which has come down to us from antiquity, with the exception of the ecclesiastical writers; all the poets, historians, philosophers, orators, writers of science, novelists, and so forth. My ambition always was to combine extensive knowledge of my profession with extensive erudition.' This was no ordinary boy of fifteen who could, ex proprio motu, work seventeen hours a day to make up to his friend. He settled early in life in the beautiful and secluded village of Banchory-Ternan, to use his own words, 'with its glassy river and magnificent hills rising in front and behind like another Tempe, with its Peneus flowing between Ossa and Olympus.' Here he spent his days in the arduous and useful profession of a country surgeon, out in all weathers and at all hours, having the lives, the births, and the deaths of a wild outlying region on his hands. This work he did so thoroughly that no one could, with a shadow of justice, say that his learning lessened his readiness and his ability for the active duties of his calling, in the full round of its requirements. He was an attentive, resolute, wise practitioner, just such a man as we would like to fall into the hands of, were we needing his help. He was always up to the newest knowledge of the time, but never a slave to any system, or addicted to swear by any master. The whole cast of his mind was thoroughly free and self-sustained. If he had any idols, they were among the mighty and the dead; but even they were his companions and familiar daimons, rather than his gods. The following is a list of Dr. Adams' principal publications, and if we consider that, during all this time, he was fighting for a livelihood, educating his family, and involved in his multifarious and urgent duties, they furnish one of the most signal instances of the pursuit and mastery of knowledge under difficulties, to be found even among our Scottish worthies : 1. Translation of Hero and Leander, from the Greek of Musæus, with other Poems, English and Latin. Aberdeen, 1826. 2. Hermes Philologus, or the connexion of the Greek and Latin. London, 1826. This made him many literary friends, among others, Edmund H. Barker, author of Dr. Parr's Life, and Dr. Anthon of New York. 3. Various Papers of Greek Prosody, etc., in the Classical Journal. 4. On the Administration of Hellebore among the Ancients. 5. On the Nervous System of Galen and other Ancient Authors, 1829, in which the originality of Sir Charles Bell's doctrines was attacked. 6. On the Toxicological Doctrines of the Ancients. 7. On the Treatment of Malignant Ulcers of the Face. 8. Notices of Greek, Latin, and Arabic Medical Authors. For Barker's Edition of Lemprière. 9. Paulus Ægineta. Translation of the first volume, 1834. This was a losing concern as to money; but it placed him, per saltum, in the first rank of learned and judicious physicians; it was an amazing tour de force for an Aberdeen surgeon, and |