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    Untitled Article

    Sir , January 8 , 1820 . f B ^ RUTH being of much more con-JL sequence to society than fame to an individual , I shall at all times feel grateful for a candid statement of any errors I may be led into , and I am

    willing to make due allowance for partiality in every case of personal feeling . With this sentiment I must express my thanks to your Correspondent for his detail ( XIV . 750 ) of the Medical Dispute on the Origin of Vitality ; at the same time , I trust it will appear in

    the sequel , that he has greatly magnified the inaccuracies of my statement , which , on his own shewing , are entirely local , and do not at au affect the subject in discussion . It is troe , he has in part shifted the scene of the drama ; but the performers in it remain the same , the plot is the same , and the denouement , if I may so speak ,

    continues the same also . Upon a close inspection , I find that the mistakes which are so greatly multiplied for the purpose of effect , and which , at first sight , have a very formidable appearance , really resolve themselves into a single one ; and it is this : that the Lectures , which I stated to have

    been delivered at Bartholomew Hospital , were , in truth , pronounced at the Surgeons' College in Lincoln ' s Inn Fields ; a circumstance that I certainly might have recollected , and for the inadvertency I here apologize . Your readers , then , will change the locality

    of the public performances , although not of the controversy , and read thus : That two medical professors , who are surgeons to Bartholomew Hospital , each having pupils and followers as ardently attached to their masters and to their dogmas as any in the schools

    of the ancient philosophers , in the course of their public lectures at Surgeons' College , have maintained what they consider opposite theories on the doctrine of life , and have brought to the discussion as large a portion of . the spleen as can be reasonably desired . Now , I would ask , is it at all likely

    that the young men , who were auditors ^ of the lectures , and ki a measure idolize the professors , should not take a lively interest in the discussion of the jarring opinions ? This , therefore , is a sufficient reason why the disputes should run higher at the Hospital I harts mentioned than at any other .

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    How your Correspondent could fall into so strange a mistake as to assert that , ** during the last winter , no controversy was afloat amongst the medical professors and students at Bartholomew Hospital" upon the subject

    in dispute , is to me unaccountable , having a personal knowledge of the contrary . A word or two here as to dates . Mr . Abernethy ' s Lectures , to which I ^ referred , were published ih 1817 , and it is the first in the series

    that furnished the principal ground of my animadversion , in the severity of which I do not feel inclined to make any abatement . The first course delivered b y Mr . Lawrence , and upoa which his colleague animadverted , were not , I believe , published ; but his second course were so , and did not make

    their appearance until last winter . As these contained the obnoxious doctrines , the discussion was revived , and involved , at the same time , some theological inquiries . It was here tlve tenderness existed that occasioned the

    suppression of the book . The unwarrantable conduct of certain governors in attempting to put down metaphysical opinions b y the infliction of civil pains and penalties , your Correspondent refers to another institution . My informant , whose authority I have no

    reason to question , speaks of it relatively to Bartholomew Hospital . I know not which is right ; perhaps it may be true of both . Before I quit the subject of these lectures , I would just observe , that the enormous price at which they were published was a sufficient bar to their extensive

    circulation . Since I wrote my former article , I have taken up the Monthly Review for last September , and there find the view I have taken of the subject fully corroborated . In a review of Mr .

    Abernethy ' s ' * Physiological Lectures , " the writer says , €€ It is naturally to be expected that a lecturer tinder ( his ) circumstances , should be disposed to look with peculiar respect on the character and acquirements of Mr . Hunter , and to regard them with the eye rather of an advocate than of an

    impartial spectator : but while we allow considerable latitude to these feelings , and should be much disinclined to question them , if restrained within moderate limits , it fe impo&eible not to

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    32 fV . tP . on the late Medical Dispute .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1820, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2484/page/32/