formed the daily vocation,
at the period spoken of, of not less than three or four private
lecturers--as they were termed--we can well imagine that the labours of
Dr. Thomson, at this point of his career, would by no means be light. In
1839, however, a partial reward for his anxieties and toils came in the
shape of an appointment to the Chair of Anatomy in Marischal College,
Aberdeen, a situation which he had filled for three years, when he was
recalled to the University of his native city to take the place of the
late venerable and widely-venerated Professor Alison. The year which saw
Dr. Thomson transferred to the granite city saw also a valuable
contribution from his pen in the _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal_, "On the Development of the Human Embryo," an elementary
nucleus, among others, of a series of specially luminous articles by him
on "Circulation," "Generation," and "Ovum," which afterwards appeared in
"Todd's Cyclopediae of Anatomy and Physiology." After a six years'
incumbency as Professor of Physiology in the University of Edinburgh, he
was, in 1848, presented by the Crown to the Chair of Anatomy in Glasgow
University, at that time vacant in consequence of the death of Dr. James
Jeffrey, who formerly had been its occupant for the long period of 58
years. On coming to Glasgow, he soon gave lively proofs that the
important situation which he had been brought to fill would, in his
hands, be anything other than a sinecure. In his opening address he
modestly promised that he would do his best to preserve the fame which
the place had acquired under his predecessors, and amply has he
fulfilled the pledge. We are led to understand that, alike in
lecture-room and laboratory, everything is carried on with spirit,
decorum, and order, and that what with the efficiency of the prelections
and examinations, aided as these are by a profusion of admirably
executed pictorial illustrations, many of them drawn by the lecturer
himself, the place is, in point of usefulness, outstripped by no
anatomical theatre anywhere, whether at home or abroad. As a lecturer Dr.
Thomson possesses many points of excellence. He is singularly lucid in
his arrangement of his topics, and what he thus arranges so well is
always stated in language at once impressive and perspicuous, while over
all there is a quiet self-possession which has a never-failing power in
subduing pupils, however buoyant or wayward. Dr. Thomson's eminence as a
scienti