y for the appearance
of certain of the productions of his unresting pen on medical topics in
the earlier numbers of the _Edinburgh Review_. We presume that it was to
his long, warmly-cherished intimacy with Mr. Allen that his younger son,
the subject of the present sketch, stands indebted for the baptismal
name he bears. Dr. John Gordon, who, half-a-century ago, was looked upon
as one of the brightest and most promising ornaments of the Edinburgh
Extra Academical Medical School, and whose early death was felt to be
almost a public loss, was among his earlier favourite pupils; the late
Sir James Simpson was one of the last. Dr. Thomson was from his youth
quite a _helluo librorum_, and up to the close of a busy, laborious
life, was a keen student and admirer of the ancient classical literature
of his honourable profession. When an old man, it was no uncommon sight
to see him whiling away a leisure hour with a well-thumbed Greek copy of
the _Aphorisms of Hippocrates_ for his sofa companion. In a home so
graced by all the amenities of lettered and scientific tastes, the
subject of these remarks could not but enjoy, when a youth, many and
great educational advantages. The tutorial shortcomings, if such there
were, whether of High School or College, could not fail to be amply
supplemented beside a domestic hearth predominated over by a father
possessed of such force of character and well-garnered experience. As a
student of medicine, Dr. Thomson held a distinguished place among his
contemporaries, a circumstance which in due time earned for him the
laurel-crown of Edinburgh studenthood, in the form of a presidency of
the Royal Medical Society--a post of honour which had been occupied by
his venerable father also, a quarter of a century before. His curriculum
of professional study completed, and the necessary examinations passed,
he obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of
Edinburgh in 1830. At this time it was yet the rule for the aspiring
candidate, ere he could secure the longed-for degree, to compose and
defend a Latin thesis drawn from some department or other of medical
science, and this, like his fellows, had Dr. Thomson to do. "De
Evolutione Cordis Animalibus Vertebratis," was the title of his
dissertation, a subject wide as the poles apart from the customary
jejune hackneyed topics figuring on such an occasion, and, at this
period, one of all others, we would imagine, where learned professors,
i