SCIENTIFIC PAPERS AND ADDRESSES ROLLESTON Hon&ott HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER ■■■■■■■■■■■■■ GEORGE ROLLESTON; M.D. SCIENTIFIC PAPERS AND ADDRESSES BY GEORGE ROLLESTON, M.D., F.R.S. LINACRE PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY AND FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD ARRANGED AND EDITED BY WILLIAM TURNER, M. B., Hon. LL.D., F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY EDWARD B. TYLOR, Hon. D.C.L., F.R.S. KEEPER OF THE MUSEUM, OXFORD WITS PORTRAIT, PLATES, AND WOODCUTS VOL. I AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M.DCCC.LXXXIV [ All rights reserved ] QH S v-l ^ rv «^> vJ * PEEFACE. These volumes contain a selection of the most important Essays contributed by the late Professor Rolleston to the Transactions of various learned Societies and to scientific Journals. Along with them are also reprinted several Addresses delivered before the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other learned bodies. These reprints have been arranged in the following sections : I. Anatomy and Physiology, in which are included many im- portant Anthropological memoirs ; II. Zoology, including his Memoirs on Archseo-zoology ; III. Archaeology; IV. Addresses and Miscellaneous papers. Amongst the unpublished manuscripts left by Dr. Rolleston were notes on various subjects of archaeological interest, which, owing to the failure in health that for some months preceded his much lamented death, he had evidently been unable to pre- pare for publication. Of these, his notes on the site of some Roman pottery works discovered in 1879 at the Mynchery upon the Sewage Farm near Littlemore, Oxford; also notes on archaeological discoveries made both at Wytham, Berks, and at Yarnton, Oxfordshire, are of much interest. Unfortunately these notes are too fragmentary to be reproduced in the form in which he left them, but I have prepared a digest, which has been printed as an appendix to the second volume. I have to thank the Councils of the Anthropological Institute, the Zoological Society, the Linnean Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Geographical Society, the Delegates of VI PREFACE. the Clarendon Press, Messrs. Macmillan & Co., and C. G. Oates, Esq., for permission to reprint the Papers published under their respective auspices, — and the Messrs. Churchill for the use of a number of woodcuts. I have also to express my great indebtedness to Mrs. Rolleston for much valuable assistance in collecting the Papers; to Dr. James Murie, and Charles Robertson, Esq., for important help in compiling the chronological list of published writings ; and to the latter gentleman, and W. Hatchett Jackson, Esq., for the aid they have given me in identifying some of the objects referred to in certain of the Papers with specimens contained in the Oxford Museum, and for other information. I have also received hints and suggestions of various kinds from Sir George Burrows, Bart., Sir Henry W. Acland, K.C.B., Prof. Flower, Prof. Max Mtiller, Prof. Moseley, J. Park Harrison, Esq., Edward Chapman, Esq., Dr. A. B. Shepherd, F. E. Beddard, Esq., E. S. Cobbold, Esq., and H. D. Rolleston, Esq., to all of whom I wish to convey my thanks. A Biographical Memoir has, at Mrs. Rolleston's request, been kindly prepared by E. B. Tylor, Esq. I consider it a privilege to have been entrusted with the work of arranging and editing this collection of the writings of the late Professor Rolleston, whose acquaintance I made when we studied medicine together in the school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, whose friendship I enjoyed uninterruptedly for a period of thirty years, and for whose talents, learning, and per- sonal character I entertain the highest respect and esteem. WM. TURNER. Univeesitt op Edinburgh, June, 1884. CONTENTS. VOLUME I. PAGE Life of Dr. Rolleston ix List of Dr. Rolleston's Published Writings, arranged in Chronological Order lxvii ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 1. On the Affinities of the Brain of the Orang Utang 3 2. On the Affinities and Differences between the Brain of Man and the Brains of certain Animals 24 3. Note on the Preservation of Encephala by the Zinc Chloride . . -53 4. On Correlations of Growth, with a Special Example from the Anatomy of a Porpoise 56 5. On Certain Modifications in the Structure of Diving Animals ... 62 6. On the Development of the Enamel in the Teeth of Mammals . . .65 7. Notes on the Blood-corpuscles of the Two- toed Sloth, Cholopus didactylus, and of the Elephant, MepJias indicm 68 8. Three Anatomical Notes and Two Anatomical Queries . . . .71 9. On the Homologies of the Lobes of the Liver in Mammalia . . 72 10. On the Placental Structures of the Tenrec (Centetes ecaudatus) and those of certain other Mammalia ; with Remarks on the Value of the Placental System of Classification .... 74 11. On the Homologies of certain Muscles connected with the Shoulder- joint . 112 12. Notes on the Post-mortem Examination of a Man supposed to have been one hundred and six years old 141 13. On the Various Forms of the so-called ' Celtic ' Cranium . . . .155 14. On the Weddo of Ceylon 161 15. Description of Figures of Skulls obtained by Canon Green well from British Barrows which he examined 163 16. General Remarks upon the preceding Series of Prehistoric Crania from British Barrows '. . .223 17. Appendix to the Account of the Crania obtained from British Barrows . 321 18. On the People of the Long-barrow Period 353 19. Note on the Animal Remains found at Cissbury 409 20. Notes on a Second Skeleton found at Cissbury 428 21. Report of Excavation of a Twin-barrow and a Single Round Barrow at Sigwell (Six Wells), Parish of Compton, Somerset 440 22. Description of a Human Skeleton found in a Barrow at Rockley . . 453 23. Report on the Fauna of a Crannog at Lochlee, Tarbolton, Ayrshire . . 456 24. Report on Bones from Chastleton 460 25. On the Craniology of the Bushmen 462 26. The Blood-corpuscles of the Annelides 480 27. On the Difference of Behaviour exhibited by Inuline and ordinary Starch when treated with Salivary Diastase and other converting agents . . 498 Vlll CONTENTS. VOLUME II. ZOOLOGY. PAGE 28. On the Domestic Cats, Felis domesticw and Mustela foina, of Ancient and Modern Times 501 29. On the Cat of the Ancient Greeks 515 30. On the Domestic Pig of Prehistoric Times in Britain 518 31. New Points in the Zoology of New Guinea 565 32. On the Rot in Sheep 567 33. Note on the Geographical Distribution of Limax agreeth, Avion hortensis, and Fasciola hepatica . . . . • 571 ARCHAEOLOGY. 34. Researches and Excavations carried on in an Ancient Cemetery at Frilford 581 35. Further Researches in an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Frilford, with Remarks on the Northern Limit of Anglo-Saxon Cremation in England . . .653 36. On the Three Periods known as the Iron, the Bronze, and the Stone Ages . 660 37. On the Structure of Round and Long Barrows 679 38. On the Character and Influence of the Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England, as illustrated by Archaeological Research 681 39. Jade Tools in Switzerland 686 ADDRESSES AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 40. Address on Physiology in relation to Medicine in Modern Times . . 693 41. The Harveian Oration, 1873 729 42. The Modifications of the External Aspects of Organic Nature produced by Man's Interference 769 43. Biological Training and Studies 846 44. Address on Anthropology 880 45. The Examination System and the Pre-requisites of Candidates . . . 907 46. The Relative Value of Classical and Scientific Training . . . .916 47. The Earth-closet System 923 48. On Typhoid or Enteric Fever in Indian Gaols, and on the Relations of that Disease and of Cholera to the Dry-earth System of Conservancy . .927 Appendix : — Notes on the Site of Roman Pottery Works Sewage Farm . . -937 Notes on Archaeological Discoveries at Wytham . . . . . 939 Notes on Archaeological Discoveries at Yarnton .942 Index 945 LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON Materials for a full memoir of Professor Rolleston do not exist. But his letters, and the recollections of friends, have preserved some details of the life of a man whose power of mind and nobility of character made him a figure of moment in Oxford during the years 1 860-1 880, a period full of im- portance in the history of the University. The Rollestons doubtless had their name from one of the old townships in mid or north England, named from some chief bearing the Danish name of Rolf, and which in Domesday are variously written Eolvetune, Eolvestune, Rollestune, Bollestone. The family were of good standing in Derbyshire early in the 18th century, and their first appearance in the world of letters was made by Miss Frances Rolleston, born in 1781, a lady well known in Evangelical circles, zealous for the abolition of slavery, and a supporter of the temperance movement in its beginnings. Living at Keswick, she knew Wordsworth and Southey, about whom her published letters contain some stories ; but her main claim to popularity consists in a book entitled ' Mazzaroth ; or the Constellations,' an abridgment of which was published so late as 1879. In it she discovers primeval prophe- cies in the signs of the Zodiac, ending with the Fishes, to her an anticipation of the well-known Christian emblem, and a prophetic type of the multitudes of the Church to come. Educated people are now apt to smile at the etymological vagaries which were this learned lady's grounds of argument; thus it seemed quite obvious to her that the Hebrew word or, ' light,' was the source of the French word for ' gold.' But it is instructive to remember X LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. that this is not very unlike what the world of those days took quite gravely in the learned quartos of Bryant and Faber. In one of Miss Rolleston's letters (1837) she records that at Maltby she taught Hebrew to one of her nephews, 'the very cleverest boy I ever knew.' This was George Rolleston, then eight years old, but who in after life did not quite reciprocate his aunt's admiration. Indeed, he used to descant with humorous horror on his sufferings when once introduced to a large and serious evening party as the nephew of the great Miss Rolleston, the authoress of ' Mazzaroth.' The Maltby just mentioned is a village near Rotherham in Yorkshire, where the Rev. George Rolleston combined the functions of squire and vicar, living at Maltby Hall; and his son George was born July 30, 1829. The sisters of the younger George Rolleston, the subject of this memoir, still tell of their wonder at the ways of the odd clever boy, rolling lazily on the hearth-rug, or with his head between his hands buried in a story-book, yet all the time knowing whatever was read or said, and ready with the lessons he seemed scarcely to have looked at. Taught by his father, a fine classical scholar, the lad is said to have been able at ten years old to read Homer at sight. Some of these family stories have an interest as explaining Rolleston's later life. It has been thought extra- ordinary that a man whose school and college education was entirely classical, should have turned into so thorough an anatomist and zoologist. But in fact this was a reversion to the tastes of boyhood, when at six years old, dressed in his little crimson pelisse, he would go out in the snow alone to attend to his duties as 'keeper,' and set the traps in the plantations round the house. Brought up on Izaak Walton, White's 'Natural History of Selborne,' and Stanley's ' History of Birds,' he knew all the birds and their nests, and could tell them by their flight at great distances. In his schoolboy days he had taken to preparing skins, and setting up skeletons of mice and weasels in his little room, the smell of which the inmates of the house remember after half-a-century. An old servant says of him : LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XI 1 He was very fond of animals and birds, and dissecting them. I once went in to call him for dinner, and the table was spread all over with birds and a foumart (polecat) he had dissected, and he showed me the different parts of the stomach. The white cat was brought up for me to see; he was waiting to dissect it, he said.' Not less significant of his future was his setting up heaps of stones to record the death of a favourite animal or other event. A boy who at eight years old piled up in the plantation a memorial cairn to commemorate his sister's recovery from scarlatina, was well started on the line for an explorer of ancient burial-mounds. George Rolleston had all the love of shooting and fishing of a Yorkshire moorland lad, but in later life his sensitiveness as to giving pain increased from year to year, till he came to look on field sports with horror. He used often to tell how when a boy he once went out shooting with a man-servant, and seeing something move in the hedge he fired at it, when the supposed rabbit dropped into the ditch, and the serving-man remarked it was 'only a boy.' Rolleston threw down his gun in despair, but the man consoled him with, 'Never mind, Master George, there's plenty more in Maltby.' After all, the boy was unhurt, and it was the sports- man's mind that received the shock. At ten years old he was sent to the Grammar School at Gainsborough. With pride in this advancement, when his eldest sister, who had taught him writing, now recommended his attending to it, he wrote a reply so characteristic that it has been kept — ' I have now no person to call " upstroke " and " downstroke." I have now such a great deal of writing every day and night, and if it is not written well it is not signed, so that there is no need of that friendly advice.' He stayed about two years at Gainsborough, and afterwards went to the Collegiate School at Sheffield, then under Dr. Jacob. His schoolfellows remember him getting candle ends and sitting up to read at forbidden hours, and sending fags to bring him books as he lay in bed in the early summer mornings. At seventeen he com- peted for an open scholarship at Pembroke College, Oxford, and Xll LIFE OF DR. IiOLLESTON. was elected. It was in 1847 that he came into residence, and one who came up about the same time describes him as a tall thin lad, looking quite a schoolboy, with his clothes showing recent growth of limbs which had left the tailor behind. Another contemporary, who knew him well, remembers how young he was in every way, beginning at first sight to tell with schoolboy frankness all about his study at Sheffield, how he furnished it, how the boy next him had died, and how he had read all his Greek plays. The Master of the College did not mind his youth, and only said, ' He is a clever Yorkshireman, and when a Yorkshireman is clever, he is clever.' Boy as he was, he took rank at once. It was the time when the College was undergoing transforma- tion. Dr. Jeune, Dean of Jersey (afterwards Bishop of Peter- borough), had lately succeeded Dr. Hall as Master. Under him Pembroke was just on the change from a small close foundation, chiefly limited to certain schools and localities and to founders' kin. The buildings were insufficient and some were dilapidated, and the undergraduates few, when the new Master set himself to fill the ranks of the College; funds supplied by benefactors were made effective in open scholarships and fellowships, and rebuilding and reorganisation had gone well forward before the time came when parliamentary powers were obtained to do away with the limitations of the old foundation. Thus Rolleston's connexion with*Pembroke began in years of change and activity, and threw him into the midst of a society more mixed even than usual through the overlapping of the old and new regimes. Though never hiding his own strong likes and dislikes, he already had the faculty of getting on with men of different kinds, the boating men, the fast men, the quiet reading men, and the dilettanti, who would nowadays be called aesthetes. Yet his character was already so fixed, that the influences which might have moved a more moveable disposition left him substantially what home teaching had made him years before. In the common dissipations of undergraduate life he took no part; in fact, he worked too hard. When he lived out of LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. Xlii college, his incessant reading through the night, or in summer in the window-seat in the full glare of sunshine, was a wonder to the people at his lodgings; they once ran up to tell him of a great fire, but he only said, ' How peculiar ! ' and would no more look up from his work than if he had been Archimedes. To be late for a lecture was a sin he could never forgive himself for. Once he was at a breakfast in college, when ten o'clock struck; he. rushed headlong downstairs, struggling into his gown as he went, meeting half-way the upcoming scout, who was knocked to the bottom of the flight, and to this day carries in a broken nose the record of punctuality. When Rolleston came to be himself a lecturer, he was in like manner severe on his class, though in his later years he relaxed a little. He used to say, 'When I was young I could never forgive my men for being late — but now I give 'em five minutes.' It must not be thought, however, that this studious life was due to want of ability for manly exercises. At school the old drill-sergeant would not condescend to fence with any other boy but Rolleston, who, he used to say, was the only one who could handle a single- stick if the Mounseers came among us. He rowed in his College eight,- and kept up through life his fondness for the river, priding himself on his pupils who distinguished themselves there — indeed his class sometimes fancied that he tolerated their shortcomings more easily than those of other men. An influence one would have expected to find marks of in Rolleston' s character was the religious controversy which then divided Oxford. Newman and Pusey had raised the standard of church supremacy, and a phalanx of zealous youths followed their lead. Since then Stanley, preaching for liberty, had raised a new spirit among many of the bolder and more independent. Thus within the lines of the Church of England there was renewed the world-old strife between authority and reason, with its usual distracting results of personal animosity and social division. Rolleston's temper and work both kept him outside the actual battle of theology. The ceremonies, the symbolisms, the ecstasies of the High Church School wanted the reality he cared for. The XIV LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. Broad Church School, more sympathetic to him, relieved him in his scientific work from the pressure of theological restraint, while enlarging his tolerance of other men's views to the widest stretch. But from first to last he held for himself, beneath and almost untouched by theological or scientific discussion, the faith of his early youth, much as he had it from his father, the York- shire clergyman. It is well to get a clear idea of this at the beginning in following Rolles ton's career, which cannot be understood without it. But it must also be understood that to him the good of theology consisted in its being the vehicle of morality. It was one thing to hear him argue with his friend Wickham Flower about Augustine's doctrine of the Fall of Man, but quite another thing if all at once he came on some live question of duty or honour, drawing from him solemn words in tones which showed where the inmost motives of his mind were enshrined. The memory of his early friends shows that in his college days it was already with him as in later years, when he had passed from taught to teacher. He had his great Homeric laugh at a sentimentalist, and his all but ferocious scorn of a charlatan. But let him have a right to enforce against selfish resistance, or a wrong to expose and punish, let him feel called on to attack the oppressor of the weak, or the perverter of righteous dealing, then one might see his eyes kindle and his massive features harden, into the attitude of combat, bringing even his shoulders and arms into the first suggestion of battle, truly signalling the mind within. In such real issues, rather than in abstract questions of doctrine, the man and his impulses are to be read. He was a born fighter, ever ready to do battle for truth and right, wherever he believed truth and right were to be found, and needed help from him. Among the records of Rolleston's Undergraduate days are letters written to his friend Miss Mary Beever, a lady whom he used to visit in her house on the side of Coniston, and who in an auntly manner encouraged him to correspond with her in the old-fashioned serious way. Letters written in men's student days ought to be thus kept, showing as they do the growth and LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XV shifting of crude opinions formed as each new aspect of life opens on the mind, to be strengthened or displaced as the ultimate resultant shapes itself. To the writer of these pages, who knew Kolleston well, but not till middle age, when his character had long since set into the sharp lines of liberal and reformer, it is curious to come upon him reading Macaulay's Essays for the first time, and remarking, ' He is rather radicalised, and is full of Progress and Whiggery, but in other respects is most delightful.' And again, 'What a charming history Ali- son's is. I almost wonder at people's taste for novels.' ' I can- not see how the most fervent admirer of Carlyle could ever be so far carried away as to enter him into competition in a historical contest with Alison.' In his second year he describes a characteristic University scene : — ' Last Sunday I heard in the beautiful Norman ante-chapel of Christ Church the man whose name Evangelical ribaldry has so long applied to all not of their own persuasion, which meaneth that Dr. Pusey preached. There was an immense crush, perilous indeed to the bones of all therein engaged, caused by those who were eager to hear him. The whole Cathedral, i. e. all used for the University, was filled in the space of three minutes completely as regards seats. Such is the regard the University of Oxford pays to a man humble in guise, holy in demeanour, self-denying in life, whom, however, the irreverent Dissenter and robed Schismatic scruple not to call a Jesuit, a Papist, a hypocrite. The pith of his sermon was in- tended to show the truth of the fact that evil shall hunt the wicked man, and that sin always in this life even superinduces an adequate punishment. And yet, which you, I am afraid, will hardly believe, there was no reference, as the "Record" would say, to inanimate mediation, such as that of Crucifixes, etc. How- ever, I am afraid that though there was no impression of the cloven foot in the sermon, yet Puseyites would not be so called if their Founder were not like them.' By 1850 his ideas had swung into a direction nearer that of his after-life: — 'Though I take now, for the present, little interest in anything not immediately connected with my reading, I yet every now and then catch xvi LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. distant sounds of latrations from without. There has, I see, been a meeting in London of High Churchmen, who have been very vigorous and amusing. The triumph of Low Church, the religion of a northern democracy, is only one step forward in the race of Liberty which this century has witnessed. If bigotry had carried the day it would have been a violation of the spirit of the age, and its triumph would not have been permanent. And the defeated party, not seeing this, not knowing when they are well off, nor understanding in what utter ruin they and the whole Church would have been swallowed up if the result had been otherwise, are enduring indignation and unknown pangs. The man who has an eye to see the movements, an ear to hear the voices of the age, cannot doubt that the spirit it breathes is Individual Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and National Progress. And then, seemingly as much out of place as a figure in chain armour in a modern banqueting-room, do we see the reactionaries struggling against the stream which flows past, uninjuring while unprovoked. The apex of the Delta should meet the stream, not any one of its three longitudinal boun- daries. If so, by constant alluvial deposit it becomes assimi- lated: if not, it is overwhelmed by the outspreading of the waters. This latter course seems to have been chosen by the present champions of Despotism. But who is so free from prejudice as to be able to read aright the spirit of the age he lives in? We have not yet left off quarrelling about the characters of Pericles and Cimon, men who lived 2000 years ago, and are out of the sphere of party passion and interest. There is no hope of wide views for present times. " If we had lived in the days of our fathers," said the Jews of old, and we say now with equal truth. The Tory party now (for a High Churchman on any other principles but Tory is a Centaur) is not content with building the sepulchres, it would raise the ghost of the monsters who received a deadly hurt now 200 years ago at the hands of their ancestors. My most favourite subject of contemplation at present is the fight made for the principles of Liberty at the beginning of this century. Dark clouds seem LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XV11 to rest over it, and in the midst of it are to be seen moving great figures. At present we are so close to them that they only impress us with our own littleness, not with their greatness. We are like the travellers at the foot of the Sphinx : its real size, its true proportions, are only seen at a distance. Though dis- tance takes away from the distinctness, it adds to the majesty of its features. Now look at Arnold. In a profession in which liberal opinions were a sure bar to preferment, he stood forth as an uncompromising advocate for freedom. His views were distorted neither by prejudice nor by precedents, by establish- ments, nor by interest. As dispassionately as the mathematician he proposed his problem, and as calmly he declared the result, careless of everything but truth. "By the one party accused as mystic, by the other as infidel." The man rises before us like a granite mountain, and the crows and choughs around its base show scarce so gross as beetles. The mean man could not explain, the weak man could not comprehend, his conduct. To me there is no subject so pleasing and none so ennobling as the triumph of will over interest, and the victory of conscience over expediency. But I shall tire you with my opinions . . . .' In 1850 Rolleston took a First Class in Classics, and next year was elected a Fellow of Pembroke. The fellowship which he took was the medical one lately founded by Mrs. Sheppard, and this circumstance was the turning-point of his life, de- termining him to take to Medicine as his profession. It is a good index of the change of educational ideas within the last generation, that one meets with no letters to or from Rolleston at this time complaining of his having spent four of the most receptive years of his life exclusively on classical studies, hardly in the remotest degree bearing on his future profession. Under the present system a student looking forward to the career of Medicine does not abandon altogether the literary culture which is the University's heritage, but he soon ceases to devote his whole time to letters, and passes on into the special lines of science suited to form the ground-work for his future profession. Only men of exceptional energy and capacity b XV111 LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. could afford to start so heavily handicapped as Rolleston, and it is no wonder that he laboured in after years to widen the academical course into a system more perfectly adapted to meet the needs of the age. As for himself, he overcame by sheer thoroughness the difficulties of beginning to learn physic at two-and-twenty, entering as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in October, 1851. A remark by his friend Professor Turner, the present editor of his scientific papers, shows how new a turn his mind had to take. Mentioning the high value Rolleston attached to his training in the Chemical Laboratory under Dr. Stenhouse, Professor Turner, who was his fellow- student there, adds, 'It was there probably that he grasped the meaning of scientific method, and was brought face to face, for the first time, with an experimental science.' The Master of his College gave him a piece of parting advice, that one who was to prescribe ought to begin by making up pre- scriptions at an apothecary's and becoming a practical judge of drugs. That he did go to work in this way is still remembered at the Hospital, for Sir James Paget writes of him thirty years later : ' When Mr. Rolleston came to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, his age and his standing in the University placed him among a comparatively small group of the senior students ; he would not enter into any of the school competitions, but he gave himself at once to the regular work of the Hospital, and to its most practical studies. He intended to practise, and he learnt everything, even of the simplest kind, that might be useful. One might have thought that he intended to make himself a merely practical man. Yet he never gave up the pursuits of science and of literature, and could be provoked into declaring a resolve that he would be a Fellow of the Royal Society in ten years, and he was so.' University men were few at Bartholomew's and kept some- what aloof from the rest. Rolleston lodged for part of his time with another Oxford graduate, now a physician in Oxford, Dr. E. B. Gray. Their rooms were in Dyer's Buildings, Thavies Inn, on the left hand as one goes up Holborn, where they led a diligent but uneventful life. It was Rolleston's habit after his LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XIX day's work in the wards, to turn a few yards out of his way on to Blackfriars Bridge, where, standing in one of the recesses, he would face the wind for half-an-hour and then go home to dinner. The robust appetite that had been gathering since breakfast had then to be satisfied, the ' Times ' to be read, then an hour's heavy sleep, followed by a huge basin of strong tea to wake him well up for bookwork till 12 or 1. Such a diet, unlightened by the ordinary idleness and pleasures of the medical student, probably accounts for a good deal of the dis- ordered constitution of later years. Sometimes he visited his friends ; for instance, there is a mention in the ' Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson' that in 1852 Rolleston came to breakfast with him to meet ' Nineveh ' Layard. But amusement seemed hardly even to occur to him. The only change in the week's hard round was on Sunday, when at this particular time he gave his thoughts a new turn by reading through Gibbon, storing his memory with sonorous passages which he could recite verbatim to the end of his life. In the afternoon the two friends would often go down the river and walk in Greenwich Park. Any- thing less like the received idea of the medical student away from the wards and dissecting-room, it is not easy to imagine. Rolleston's was a grimly serious career, and he left the Hospital with the reputation of one of its hardest workers. Never trying for prizes or distinctions, nor attempting any original research, he simply worked for knowledge and experience of medicine. The practical knowledge he had gained under Sir George Burrows, whose clinical clerk he was for some time, stood him in good stead when almost immediately his opportunity came of carrying it into practice. In 1855, toward the end of the Crimean War, he was appointed one of the physicians to the British Civil Hospital at Smyrna. The Master of Pembroke wrote him a letter of good advice, very characteristic of the writer. ' You have profit and employment in what would other- wise be the dead time in your career, possibly an avenue to something great and permanent . . . You will now be under official trammels. Pray be discreet as to your words. Speak b2 XX LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. not too strongly of things, nor strongly at all, especially in the way of blame, of men. When you are called upon officially to express opinions, then praise or blame with justice and modera- tion, till then only look, think, and obey cheerfully.' The position which Rolleston had taken was one peculiar enough to justify the counsels of Dr. Jeune. The Smyrna Civil Hospital, established at a time when the lessons of disaster were bringing about an improved military adminis- tration, is thus described by Kinglake ('Invasion of the Crimea,' vol. vi. p. 416): 'Amongst our Levantine hospitals, the one formed at Smyrna exhibited the success of a great inno- vation on which Mr. Sidney Herbert had ventured; for the medical officers to whom he entrusted the wards were, all of them, civilians, and these, aided by a well-chosen band of ladies and salaried nurses, made the new institution a model of what can be done for the care of troops sick or wounded.' Such an innovation naturally had its official difficulties. General Sir H. Lefroy, who made two visits to Smyrna in November, 1855, gives some account of Rolleston's position. Colonel (afterwards Sir Henry) Storks was then Commandant, and Dr. Meyer Medical Chief of the British Chief Hospital. On the Medical Staff there were four senior physicians, each in charge of a division. Dr. Meyer found these gentlemen of little use, too old to alter their habits. Many of the }roung assistants were first- rate men, and conspicuous among them was Mr. Rolleston. The Seniors made endeavour to treat the Juniors as subordinates in a professional sense, to work as clinical clerks under them. This the young men would not submit to, and the good sense and firmness of Dr. Meyer put a veto upon it. He gave them the undivided care of cases, and looked to the Seniors for general assistance only. He found the junior surgeons, he told me, pretty good physicians, and the junior physicians pretty fair surgeons. The division into physicians and surgeons, but with no very rigid demarcation, was found to work well. Some of Rolleston's home letters have been kept, which show what his hospital life was to himself, and the recollections of LIFE OF DR. 110LLEST0N. XXI one of the lady nurses, slight as they are, may give an idea of what he seemed to others. ' During the nine months that I spent in the Hospital at Smyrna, I nursed almost exclusively under him in the Division confided to Dr. Leared's and his care, so that I had constant opportunities for understanding his fine character, so full of talent and energy, so kind, and with so much earnestness beneath his playful manner. Looking back I see a tall slight fair young man moving up and down the long corridors lined with the beds of the sick, and the wards opening from them, giving his orders clearly, attending to every case most carefully, always kind and cheering in his manner, and most pleasant and considerate to those working under him. . . . He was very successful in " fighting the fever," as he used to call it, and for a long time his Division was mostly filled with such cases.' On May 25, 1 855, the young physician writes to his sister : — 'Everything just now wears the couleur de rose. The last few days of April we got our hospital nearly empty ; and the first six days of May brought us down two shiploads of sick from Balaclava. The first ship, the " Sydney," steamed in on the 1st of May about 10 a.m., ran out her anchor and ran up a yellow flag about 300 yards out away from the Hospital. It was very exciting. We found however that the cases she brought down were not so serious as had been expected ; and the second ship, the " Brandon," which came on the 6th, had still fewer cases on board. Matters, in fact, are improving in the Crimea, and we have not now the wretched depression and utter prostration to deal with of which we had so much in March last. It is a short three weeks since these arrivals took place, and the Hospital is rapidly assuming the appearance of a convalescent establishment again. Can anything speak more strongly for our organisation and sanitary condition? The English have put unbounded means at the disposal of the authorities everywhere throughout the Levant ; we, here at Smyrna, have made use of them, and the results will justify the expenditure. Elsewhere, I believe, the good things sent out XX11 LIFE OF DR. ROLLFSTON. have never reached their destination, and that makes all the difference. For my own part, I have not often had such a con- tinuance of good health and vigour. For the last six weeks I have had Dr. Martin's wards as well as my own to take care of, and I never found myself the least overworked, even at the time the two sick ships came down. It was of course a great advantage to get so much practice put into my hands all at once, and, by a little management, I contrived to get a very large share of what are called "good" cases (i.e. dangerous ones) into my own wards. At the present moment I have as many of these cases, more, I think, than anyone else. Of the first lot (16 or so), one died in about 36 hours after landing: the rest are all doing fairly. Very few deaths have taken place lately, I don't think more than one this week. We have in reality about 750 soldiers here, though the papers speak of us as having only 500 ; our hospital has only 500 men in it, but it has a Convalescent establishment as well, which no other hospital has, so that they keep and count their convalescents whereas we send them off one mile to the Lazaretto and do not count them in our sum total. Hence our mortality is really very low. ... I have plenty of time for visiting and flirting, and reading to boot. In fact I have read more medical books since I have been here than I could have done anywhere else I think, also I have contrived to find an outlet for some of those social qualities which go towards making up the entire man.' After a while, finding himself with nothing to do, Rolleston came to Sebastopol to offer his services, but Dr. Hall told him he had more doctors already than he knew what to do with, so ' I re- signed myself to sight-seeing for my fortnight's leave of absence. In the three days I have had here, I have seen Balaclava, Inker- man and Sebastopol. I have got clear notions of what war really is, which you cannot do from books or prints (though the Redan and Malakoff are very like their pictures in last week's "Illustrated"), and I have gone over those famous fields and collected trophies with my own hands from them. Also I have heard the whistling of the round shot which the Russians fling LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. Xxiii at one from the north side. Sebastopol in the distance looks very beautiful, it has a grand Grecian building in it, like the Madeleine in Paris, which strikes the eye, as well as large barracks, hospitals, forts, etc. The south side is built on ground sloping up inclined-plane fashion from the harbour up to the south sea-board which is cliff like the south coast England, north coast France cliffs. When you enter it you are struck by the utter destruction of what seemed so fine, shots lodging in walls or great holes knocked through them, no floors, no roofs, and finally a horrid smell telling of those brave men who slumber there below. The town has not walls, and is not fenced up to heaven, but has round knolls, mamelons, lying off at a little distance, made up into earth-works, great banks of earth with embrasures for myriads of cannon. The Russians were brave men to cross the valley of Inkerman, a great deep valley with a mile of level ground between on our side of it. Down the -same hillside did they descend to the bridge of Praktin, from the same hillside did they yesterday fling their shot over Philip Rolleston's and my head as we rode over the hillside collecting relics. Oh! how thick the bullets lay in particular spots. I saw some oak-leaves gathered on that ground : you know it was all covered with brushwood where the battle was fought ; all has been grubbed up since and burnt. All the battles which have been fought would, if their result had been different, have decided the fate of our army. The battle of the Tchernaya was meant to cut us from Balaclava, and how the shipping would have blazed in that narrow winding valley, so at Balaclava and at Inkerman. Near indeed was the whole army to utter destruction.5 In December Rolleston was back again in Smyrna, taking one day a week at the hospital, reading medicine, riding across a country well provided with ditches and stone walls to the vineyards, attending a single lady patient, and wishing for more work. Some work was found for him, as appears from some further notes by Sir H. Lefroy : ' There were 200 vacant beds in the hospital, and the object of my mission was to arrange, in conjunction with Col. Storks, for closing it entirely. XXIV LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. Chiefly however in consequence of the great ability of a few of the Juniors, and I again remark that Mr. Rolleston was the representative man, we determined to retain the services of four of them, viz. Messrs. Rolleston, Wilkinson, Eddows, Atkinson, as a reserve of medical strength, and to meet contingencies. This fortunately met with Lord Panmure's approval, and it was to give them something to do, and to utilise the time, that the plan was hit upon of calling for a Report on Smyrna in refer- ence to the sanitary and other aspects of the place. They received, I think, no particular instructions, but they collected a great deal of useful and valuable information, which is em- bodied in Mr. Rollestons Report, dated Nov. I, 1856. The abrupt termination of the war consigned it, like many other Reports, to the waste-paper basket.' The Report which thus came into existence is probably even now the best guide-book to Smyrna which a traveller or mer- chant could have. Among other matters, the writer's experience enables him to write with authority on the malaria-fever, the terror of Europeans in the East. Comparing the conditions of Ephesus, where it is said that no European can sleep without contracting a fever, of Mersina, the port of Tarsus, and of Alexandretta, where the inhabitants sleep in wooden cages set on poles 10 to 12 feet above the earth, he comes to the conclu- sion that the one effective condition for generating malarious fever is not abundant vegetation, is not marshy soil, nor any one season of the year, but marshy ground in the process of desiccation under the influence of solar heat. The one con- dition common to all three places in question is marshy ground, nearly or quite exhausted of its moisture by solar heat. As an illustration he quotes a warning given him by a Consul at Tripoli to avoid mulberries, because all experience shows that they cause the pernicious fever. Now logically, this caution was an instance of that commonest of fallacies, post hoc propter hoc, but scientifically interpreted it contains a certain amount of truth and should be thus read ; the sun has just got power enough to ripen the mulberries ; the marshy ground will be now LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XXV just on the point of complete drying, and malaria, consequently, just in the prime of its strength. In discussing the various nationalities of Smyrna, Eolleston claims the Greeks there as genuine representatives and descendants of the ancient Hellenes. The characteristic bearing and expression of the old models of Greek art are, he says, constantly brought before our minds as we meet the modern Greek in the streets. The seafaring Greek seemed to him like the Odysseus of the ancient sculptors, not only in general expression, but in details of limb and feature, lips, nose, eyes, hair, and forehead. The Greeks of Asia Minor have been much less intermixed with foreign blood than those in Greece Proper, and kept their Romaic speech even when Albanian was spoken in Athens, and natra f] 'EAAas e