In memoriam : Henry Power, M.B. Lond., F.R.C.S. / W.H.H.J.

Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: In memoriam : Henry Power, M.B. Lond., F.R.C.S. / W.H.H.J. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/20 (page 15)
    made the time-worn subject of interest by detailing new facts connected with Hunter’s life. As showing his thoroughness, he went down to Hunter’s birthplace so that he could feel and write a description of the country and its surroundings. The main portion of the lecture was devoted to the consideration of Hunter as a pioneer of experimental physiology. One para¬ graph I quote, as he himself had certainly inherited the traditional St. Bartholomew’s oratory. “ It is a pleasure to every Bartholomew’s man to think that some part at least of Hunter’s surgical knowledge was gained in their Hospital and that he had the opportunity of seeing the sound practice and hearing the appropriate language which distinguished the practice and lectures of Percival Pott, and of thus profiting by that combination of skill and eloquence which seems to have been handed down like the mantle of the Prophet, through Abernethy, and Lawrence, and Paget till it rests with graceful ease upon William Savory.” Never was any one perhaps better fitted for the post of examiner, as his manner and voice directly placed the examinee at his ease, and, in consequence, extraction of knowledge and not abstraction of the candidate ensued. At the College of Surgeons he was Examiner in Anatomy and Physiology from 1875 to 1880, and again from 1881 to 1884; in Physiology alone from 1884 to 1886. He was an examiner in the Honours School at Oxford (1875-77); in the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge (1874-75); at the London University Examinations in Physiology for ten years, and also at Durham University. If his published works are few, it must be remembered that he was constantly at work reviewing and translating, and this class of work shows best his extremely wide range of exact knowledge. The first book he translated was for the New Sydenham Society in 1863, “The Aural Surgery of the Present Day,” by Kramer of Berlin. His greatest work, however, was editing from 1864 to 1876 the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions of Carpenter’s ‘‘Principles of Human Physiology”—a perfect mine of information and knowledge. To do this he literally had to rewrite each edition, as physiology was then making such gigantic strides both here and on the Continent. In 1867 he published an excellent text-book of ophthal¬ mology, “ Illustrations of some of the Principal Diseases of the Eye.” The book was a concise account of the pathology and surgery of the eye, and was illustrated by chromo-lithographic reproductions of drawings done by himself. From the time he