PROFESSOR GOODSIR.*
OF the great intellects of this generation, though many will be more widely recognized, few will have left more indelible and
more permanent marks than John Goodsir, the Anatomist. He was born on the 20th of March, 1814, at the little seaport of Anstruther, on the coast of Fife, where his father, Dr. John Goodsir, was in practice as a medical man. As a boy he seems to have been distinguished for the gravity and stability of his character, for his active and inquiring mind, and for his strong mechanical genius. He was educated at the burgh and grammar schools of his native place, and afterwards went through the arts' curriculum at the University of St. Andrew's. His love of natural history began to develop, itself early, and led his family to desire that he should follow in the steps of his father and grandfather, and should become a medical practitioner. With this view he was apprenticed to the celebrated dentist, Mr. Nasmyth, with whom be laid the foundation of that knowledge of odontology which subsequently took form in his masterly monographs on the development of the teeth. At this time (1830) he commenced the study of anatomy under Dr. Knox, who was then the lecturer on this subject at the extra-academical school. The fascination exercised by this remarkable man upon all his pupils worked so powerfully upon Goodsir, that he was led to obtain the cancelling of his indentures with Nasmyth, and determined to devote himself henceforth to the study of anatomy and zoology. In 1835 Goodsir completed his medical career, and became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, after which he joined his father in practice at Anstruther, where he remained for some years. As might have been expected, however, country practice was far from offering a satisfactory field for a man with his aspirations, and his time was chiefly devoted to the pursuit of various branches of natural science. In 1838 he was induced to communicate to the British Association a long and valuable paper, " On the Origin and Development of the Pulps and Sacs of the Human Teeth," followed at the next year's meeting by a second memoir " On the Follicular Stage of Dentition in the Rumi-
nants," of which the former subsequently appeared in the Edin- burgh Medical and Surgical Journal. About this time, also, he
contributed various papers on natural history and palaeontology to the Literary and Philosophical Society of St. Andrew's. Goodsir's public career as a man of science had now fairly com- menced, and from this time henceforth proceeded without inter-
ruption. The limits of Anstruther, from the first too narrow for him, began to get more and more oppressive, and to all mere Brod-
Studien he was fundamentally averse. With the view, therefore, of enlarging his sphere of action, he now began to cement and strengthen the connection which be had already formed with Edinburgh. In February, 1839, we hear of his being elected a " frater " of the " Universal Brotherhood of Friends of Truth," which was a later development of the " Maga Club," and of which Edward Forbes was " Arch Magus," and afterwards he took the upper " flat " of 21 Lothian Street as his Edinburgh residence. In the beginning of the year 1841 he was appointed Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, a post highly con- genial to his tastes, though the salary was not more than £150 per annum. Having thus gained a footing in Edinburgh, we find him living in Lothian Street,—his flat being known variously as the " Barracks," the " Attic," or " Our Palace,"—along with his brother Harry, Edward Forbes, and George E. Day. Of these three, his chief intimates, the first afterwards accompanied Franklin on his ill-fated expedition to the North Pole, and perished with him ; Forbes, after a brilliant scientific career, died prema- turely shortly after his accession to the Chair of Natural History at Edinburgh ; and Day became Professor of Anatomy and Medicine at St. Andrew's. Amongst the outer circle of his friends at this time are the distinguished names of John Reid, Allen Thompson, William Henderson, Martin Barry, George Wilson, Samuel Brown, James Y. Simpson, Balfour, Page, Bennet, and many others who have subsequently made themselves eminent in science or literature.
For- two years Goodsir retained his place at the College of Surgeons, to the great improvement of the anatomical and patho- logical collection, which was under his charge. He then accepted the offer of an identical post at the University, the vacancy thus caused at the College being filled up by the appointment of his brother Harry, who was in turn succeeded, on joining Franklin's • Anatomical Memoirs of John Goodsir, PRA, late Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by William Turner, KB., Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. With a Biographical Notice by Henry Lonsdale, M.D., formerly Lecturer on Anatomy. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 1568.
expedition, by his younger brother, Archie. In 1844 Goodsir was appointed Demonstrator to Monro kraus, who was at that time Professor of Anatomy in the University ; and on the retirement of Monro from his chair, early in the spring of 1846, he was elected his successor by a large majority. The highest ambition of his life was now gratified, and from this time on he laboured, and laboured successfully, to elevate the Edinburgh University to the distinction of being the first anatomical school in Britain. His time was now wholly given up to human and comparative anatomy, and for the twenty years which intervened between his election to the anatomical chair and his death, he laboured incessantly and without intermission at various branches of these subjects. Vigorous and healthy as his constitution was to begin with, no human strength could hold out under such constant wear and tear, though supported by the most indomitable energy and power of will. Several years before his death an obscure spinal disease began to show itself, and deprived him to a great extent of the free use of his lower limbs. This continued to grow gradually worse, but he would take no warning, and turned a deaf ear to the repeated entreaties of his friends that he should take some repose. As his biographer says :—" lie used his body as if it were a machine, and his brain as if nervous matter could be supplied as readily as English coal to a furnace He seemed buoyed up with a passionate fervour, that would brook no delay and no temporizing with its aim and purpose." Though delayed for some time, the inevitable result of prolonged and excessive nervous tension came upon him at last. Shortly before Christmas, 1866, his strength gave way entirely, and he was com- pelled, now that it was too late, to abandon lecturing to his class. A few weeks more, during which he was mostly confined to bed, and his illness culminated in his death, which took place on the 6th of March, 1867, a few days before his fifty-third birthday.
Thus there passed away from amongst us a man of gigantic intellect and of large heart, a man endowed with an unquenchable thirst for truth and with a never-tiring love of work. It may be truly asserted that his love of knowledge was a shirt of Nessus to him, and he died a martyr to his pursuit. Born of a compara- tively obscure family, he died an anatomist and zoologist of European fame. The work that be did is not to be judged of by the membra disjecta, which we have now for the first time collected together in the two volumes before us. Valuable and important as these are, they represent but a small portion of the results of his lifelong devotion to his science. His true vocation was teaching, and few teachers have been more successful in promot- ing the study of their own department. He attained this result as it were in spite of himself, for his delivery, though impressive, was constrained, and his style, though nervous and forcible, was often stiff or obscure. In fact, his lectures were, perhaps as a rule, beyond the depth of the majority of his class. No man, however, ever, possessed more fully, or showed more plainly, the fervour of true genius; and it was to the enthusiasm with which he almost universally inspired his pupils, that his success as a teacher must mainly be ascribed. It is certainly to be regretted that he did not write more, but the true monument of his labours is to be found in the galaxy of distinguished men who remember with pride that they studied under Goodsir.
In the two volumes before us we have a collection of Goodsir's published anatomical and zoological memoirs, along with several lectures and essays, which had not been previously given to the world. We cannot pretend even to enumerate them here, but we may select the following as being amongst the most im- portant and most generally interesting :—" The Dignity of the Human Body," "Life and Organization," "The Morpholo- gical Constitution of the Vertebrate Head," "The Morpho- logical Constitution of Limbs," the two odoutological memoirs already referred to, and the papers on the mechanism of different joints, and on the electrical apparatus in the various electrical fishes.
Our space will not permit us to do more than merely notice the first of these, and that in the most cursory manner. The ten lectures on "The Dignity of the Human Body" were delivered before the class of anatomy during the summer session of 1862, and though we have little more than the skeleton of them, we venture to say that they constitute one of the most important contributions which have been made of late years to scientific anthropology. Remarkable in many ways, they are, above all, distinguished for the spirituality of the views propounded in them. Not less astonishing is the. clearness with which the most profound speculations are enunciated. They are most strikingly and forcibly opposed to the materialistic spirit in which the question as to man's place in nature has been treated by many modern men of science, and they should certainly be read by all those who hold that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Though apparently opposed to the recent speculations of Mr. Darwin, to whose theory Goodsir was strongly adverse, they nevertheless admit, we think, of being re- conciled with them. We should like to have considered these lectures at greater length, but we cannot refrain in the mean- while from giving a fragmentary quotation as to what constitutes the essence of humanity. It runs as follows :—
"The will in man also is, in consequence of his self-conscious faculty, a will properly so called; for it is, or ought to be, determined or regu- lated by thoio higher or divine principles of thought and belief of which he is conscious. At this point we reach the solution of the question as to the essence of humanity. With an animal body and instincts, man possesses also a consciousness involving divine truth in its regulative principles. But along with this highly endowed consciousness, the human being has been left free to act either according to the impulses of his animal or of his higher principle. Tho actual history of humanity, of its errors, its sufferings, and its progress, is the record of the struggle between man's animal and divine principle, and of the means vouchsafed by his Creator for his relief."
In conclusion, we feel bound to express our regret that, whilst the general editing of the work is unexceptionable, the biography should have been written in such a flippant and ambitious style. Nothing certainly could contrast more violently with the severe simplicity which characterizes all the writings which Goodsir has left behind him. The following specimen, taken almost at random, will be sufficient justification for our complaint :—
" Goodsir, like all mon of true [esthetic feeling, would readily mark any deviation from his [esthetic standard, such as the inconsonant sounds, the anormal lines, and every questionable antagonism to a thing of beauty being a joy for over. All living things ho held to be more or less beautiful if looked upon in a proper light. Thus the ' ugly and venomous toad,' as the poet called it in respect to the popular dread, was in his eyes, as in those of all men of cultivated taste, the most beautiful of creatures, not as observed on the table of the anatomist or in confined artificial areas, but seen in its natural habitat on the grassy margin of a pond, in close proximity to the gray lichened stones, or under the umbrageous greenwood tree ; there the animal could be viewed in its time resthotic relations, and specifically marked in high relief, with oyes resplendent, nay, more brilliant than diamond surface or stones of ruby."
This is a not unfair sample of more than two hundred pages of the first volume.
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