A.B. 1807, and came out 12th wrangler; A.M. 1810, M.D. 1817. In 1807 he entered on the study of medicine, which he commenced at Edinburgh, where he spent two seasons, and completed it in London by an attendance of three years on lectures, and on the practice surgical, as well as medical, of St. Bartholomew's hospital. Dr. Haviland was admitted an Inceptor-Candidate of the College of Physicians 4th April, 1814, a Candidate 30th September, 1817, and a Fellow 30th September, 1818. He delivered the Harveian oration of 1837. Dr. Haviland settled at Cambridge, and in 1814 was appointed professor of anatomy in succession to Sir Busick Harwood, and on the death of Sir Isaac Pennington in 1817, was created Regius professor of physic, and appointed physician to Addenbrooke hospital. The last-named office he resigned on account of delicate health, in 1839, but the regius professorship he held until his death. Dr. Haviland died 8th January, 1851, aged sixty-five, and was buried at Fen Ditton, near Cambridge, where he had acquired considerable property. He is commemorated in the church there by the following simple inscription: JOHN HAVILAND, M.D.: Died January 8, 1851. During the six-and-thirty years in which it was Dr. Haviland's privilege to act as professor, he did good service to the university and to the medical profession. His great earnestness and high character, his sound judgment and his thorough knowledge of the academic system, necessarily gave him much influence with the governing bodies of the university as well as with the governing bodies of the profession in other parts of the kingdom. This influence he turned to good account. It was mainly owing to his instrumentality that the faculty of medicine has been retained at all as an integral part of the university, in accomplishing which he had to contend with much lukewarmness within the body and many attacks from without; and it is entirely owing to him that the medical school has attained its present efficiency; indeed, it may almost be said to have been founded under his auspices. As professor of anatomy, Dr. Haviland was the first to give a regular course of lectures on human anatomy at Cambridge ; and as regius professor of physic, the first to give lectures on pathology and practice. Before his time the proceedings in physic were merely nominal, a few questions put viva voce, constituting the only examination. At his suggestion and by his efforts a lengthened and systematic course of study was required, rigid examinations instituted, and lectures on various branches of medicine and the collateral sciences regularly given in the medical school of the university. Dr. Haviland is said to have been an excellent practical physician, a quick and clever man, yet discreet, and possessed of sound judgment. His attention was directed less to the niceties of diagnosis than to the minutiæ of treatment in which he particularly excelled. He was most fertile in his resources, and ever ready to impart information on those details of general management which, though highly important, are but too often neglected by the practitioner. Of a sensitive temperament himself, he was careful over the reputation of another, and always showed his anxiety to maintain inviolate that good feeling which should ever exist between the patient and his medical attendant. Endowed with an ample fortune, he was a munificent contributor to the charities of Cambridge, and was ever ready with his purse and his presence to aid in relieving the poor, and in promoting the cause of education and religion.* PETER MERE LATHAM, M.D., was born in London 1st July, 1789, and was the second son of John Latham, M.D., a former president of the College, by his wife, Mary, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of the Rev. * Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1851, p. 205. Peter Mere, A.B., vicar of Prestbury, co. Chester. He was placed in the first instance at the free school of Sandbach, then at the grammar school of Macclesfield, and in due course was entered at Brasenose college, Oxford. He gained the prize for Latin verse in 1809, proceeded A.B. 24th May, 1810, A.M. 28th April, 1813, M.B. 20th April, 1814, and M.D. 29th November, 1816. Shortly after taking his first degree in arts, he applied himself to the study of physic, which he pursued at St. Bartholomew's hospital and at the Public dispensary under Dr. Bateman. Dr. Latham was admitted an Inceptor-Candidate of the College of Physicians 7th July, 1815, a Candidate 30th September, 1817, and a Fellow 30th September, 1818. He was Censor in 1820, 1833, 1837, Gulstonian lecturer in 1819, Lumleian lecturer in 1827 and 1828, Harveian orator in 1839, and was repeatedly placed upon the council. Dr. Latham was elected physician to the Middlesex hospital in 1815, and in 1823 was appointed by the government, in conjunc tion with Dr. Roget, to take the medical charge of the inmates of the penitentiary at Millbank, then suffering from an epidemic scurvy and dysentery, of obscure origin and doubtful character. Of this epidemic Dr. Latham published an interesting account," pregnant with evidence of acute and patient research and of clear, cogent reasoning." Dr. Latham was appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's hospital 30th November, 1824, a few days before which he resigned his office at the Middlesex hospital. To his exertions and to the influence of his example, the medical school of St. Bartholomew's hospital owes much of its efficiency and reputation. The practical instruction given in the medical wards of that hospital at the time of Dr. Latham's election as physician was at its lowest point. He at once applied himself to its improvement; he worked in the wards with uncommon diligence and energy, and his clinique was recognised, ere long, as the most careful, precise, and painstaking in London. At a subsequent period in association with and aided by Sir George Bur rows, Dr. Latham undertook the lectures on the theory and practice of medicine in the hospital school. His lectures on the subject, unlike most of their class, were highly finished and exhaustive essays on selected subjects, which he had made the object of his own especial study. Of Dr. Latham's mode of teaching clinical medicine, he has left us a specimen in his admirable "Lectures on Subjects connected with Clinical Medicine," 12mo. Lond. 1836, "the publication of which," says Sir Thomas Watson, "marked an era in the clinical teaching of this country"-of his mode of teaching the theory and the practice of medicine in his "Lectures on Diseases of the Heart," 2 vols. 12mo. Lond. 1845. In matter and in style these three small volumes leave nothing to be desired. They are among the choicest writings-opera verè aurea-of our profession, and will always be admired and valued. Dr. Latham's withdrawal from active work was signalized by the appearance under the name of "General Remarks on the Practice of Medicine," of a series of remarkable essays embodying in choice and stately language the results of his own well trained observation, deep reflection, and matured conclusions on some of the most difficult but interesting subjects that can engage the thoughts of the physician. These essays are eminently suggestive, and merit more attention and a deeper study than have yet been accorded to them. Doubtless they will obtain it, in the "Collected Works of Dr. P. M. Latham," now in course of publication by the New Sydenham Society, under the editorship of Dr. Martin. * Dr. Latham's health, which had always been delicate, began to give way under the pressure of his work at St. Bartholomew's, and in November, 1841, he relinquished his office there and with it, as he thought, the best hopes of being useful in his generation. His health then improved, and for some years yet to come he was enabled to maintain his position among the first of In the British Medical Journal, vol. ii, 1861, i and ii, 1862, and i, 1863. London physicians. But his malady-emphysema of the lungs and severe paroxysms of asthma-increased upon him, disabled him from exertion, and caused him in 1865 to withdraw from business and from London. He retired to Torquay, survived for ten years, and died there 20th July, 1875, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. Dr. Latham was appointed physician extraordinary to the queen at her majesty's accession, and he retained that office to his death. His character has been admirably drawn by his friend, Sir Thomas Watson, to whose elegant memoir* I have been much indebted in the preceding sketch. "Dr. Latham's conduct throughout life was governed by an abiding and imperative sense of duty; and as a corollary of this temper of mind must be reckoned his love and his habits of order and method. He was a slow, self-critical composer, fastidious in settling his diction, and careful above all things that it should clearly convey his meaning. Settled by strong conviction in his Christian faith, Dr. Latham lived a life of unostentatious but habitual piety. He was, withal, a charming companion, full of various information, affluent in anecdote, with a keen sense of fun and humour. With this was blended, as is not uncommon, a quick sensibility of pathetic emotion. His letters are treasures of good sense, of lively and epigrammatic comments on men and things, of shrewd and weighty reflections, wise advice, and affectionate greetings." Dr. Lathamt was a very small, spare man, considerably below the middle height. His spine slightly curved, so that one shoulder was a little higher than the other, a defect which one rarely noticed, for it was rendered less obvious by the scrupulous neatness of his dress. His head was very remarkable, and he carried *St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, vol. xi. For all that follows of Dr. Latham I am indebted to the graphic and loving pen of one of the most distinguished of his many distinguished pupils, Charles West, M.D. |