In memoriam : Edmund A. Parkes / [Sir William Aitken].

  • William Aitken
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In memoriam : Edmund A. Parkes / [Sir William Aitken]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sufficiency of intellectual and moral excellence for the attainment of great success. The late distinguished statesman, Sir Robert Peel, when address- ing, as Lord Rector, the students of Glasgow University, made use of these memorable words :—“ There is a presumption amounting almost to a certainty, that if any one of you will determine to be eminent, in whatever- profession you may choose, and will act with unvarying steadiness in pursuance of that determination, you will, if health and strength be given you, infallibly succeed.” Another not less distinguished statesman has spoken in this same. strain—“ That it is in man himself, and not in his circumstances, that the secret of his destiny resides.” For you that destiny will hence- forth take its final bent towards good or towards evil, from the habits of mind, habits of thought, and habits of life which you will form during the coming early years of your military medical service. The life of Parkes stands out conspicuous for its great amount of labour and accomplished work, and for the exemplary way he did it. So quietly and unobtrusively did he go through the laborious details of work, that I never knew him to name any particular investigation he was specially engaged upon till it was finished. He was extremely reticent in this respect. There is also reason to believe that to get through so much work as he did he regulated his time with a severe economy—redeeming many hours at night— consuming the midnight oil into the early morning—hours which others give to sleep.* As to his own bodily constitution and physical fitness for such constant work, I think he illustrated by his life and premature death the quotation from Roger Bacon with which he so emphati- cally commenced that eloquent lecture “ On the Cure of Old Age,” to which I have referred. The quotation is this :—“ There is a nature assumed from the parent which has an utmost term of existence which cannot be surpassed; so there are numberless instances of age which comes before its time—of a body decayed even before its term of maturity has been reached—of strength gone—of death commencing at a term of life when, according to Nature’s laws, the body should be in all its vigour and the mind in all its strength.” Parkes’ death was a premature death of this kind, at the age of fifty-six, when the body should be in all its vigour and the mind in all its strength. That dread disease was upon him “ which so prepares its victims, as it were, for death, which throws around familiar looks unearthly indications of the coming change—a dread disease in which the struggle between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and * See Appendix for epitome of work done by Dr. Parkea.