Essays on surgical subjects / by Sir Berkeley Moynihan.

  • Berkeley Moynihan
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on surgical subjects / by Sir Berkeley Moynihan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    men instantly attractive as an orator. Yet, as he devel¬ oped his argument, little by little, and step by step, the audience warmed to him, he interested them, he in¬ trigued them, he dominated them, he fired them; intellec¬ tually he roused them to breathless interest; emotionally they were at times at the limit of self-control. No one could bear to miss a word, and while Murphy spoke no man left his seat. For his meaning was conveyed in pellucid language and though he might speak with the vehemence of raging conviction his thought was never obscured in a smoke of words. Such an intellectual lode- stone was he that appointments were missed and hunger and thirst and fatigue were forgotten. For while Murphy expounded his gospel everything else seemed to fade in importance, overshadowed by the lessons which were now being learnt so eagerly. I often wondered, as I listened, in what degree he resembled Lincoln. The tall, gaunt frame, and the harsh and meagre and strident voice were the same. Murphy must have been one of the handsomest men of his day; Lincoln’s features were haggard, plain and homely, but his deep and glowing, sad and tender eyes no man could forget. Murphy had no such command of language as Lincoln, certainly one of the greatest orators who has ever spoken our language. But in effect they must have been alike. For they made everything else seem common¬ place when they spoke, and they seemed to be delivering a message charged with truth and pregnant with con¬ fidence and hope. Lord Charnwood in his most excellent work on “Abraham Lincoln” writes of him: “His voice when he first opened his mouth surprised and jarred upon the hearers with a harsh note of curiously high pitch. But it was the sort of oddity that arrests attention, and