13 - Eminent Doctors- Their Lives and Their Work; Vol. 1 by George Thomas Bettany

Dive into the lives and achievements of doctors who made history in their field. Journey from the inception of the prestigious Edinburgh School of Medicine, through William Harveys revolutionary work on blood circulation, to the advancements in surgery and Edward Jenners pivotal role in creating vaccines. This is Volume 1 of a two-part series.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section twelve of Eminent Doctors Their Lives and their Work,
Volume one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please vis at LibriVox dot org. Eminent Doctors Their Lives
in Their Work, Volume one, but George Thomas Bettany, Marshall

(00:25):
Hall and the Discovery of reflex action. The character of
Marshall Hall, who divides with Sir Charles Bell the principal
honors of discovery as to the nervous system, presents a
contrast to his in that it displays a mind more
minutely active and more distinctly medical in its tone, combined

(00:48):
with a marvelous degree of detailed benevolence. Thus, Hall's reputation
has by Carvey's and John Hunter's, grown largely since his death.
Marshall Hall was born at Basford, near Nottingham, on February eighteenth,
seventeen ninety. His father, Robert Hall, having been a cotton

(01:09):
manufacturer and bleacher of ingenuity and originality, he first employed
chlorine as a bleaching agent on a large scale his
earliest attempts, having procured for his establishment the epithet of
bedlam He was of a very religious turn too, being
one of the early Wesleyans. The strict but benevolent piety

(01:32):
of his father and the sweet and gentle disposition of
his mother were favorable to the growth of high morality,
strict conscientiousness, and amiability of character in their family, while
the inventive ability of the father reproduced itself in his
second son, Samuel Hall, a prolific inventor, and no less

(01:55):
in his sixth son, Marshall. It is not often that
a typically an inoffensive son has turned out so conspicuously
original in his work, but he had a saving fondness
for boyish literature such as Robinson Crusoe, and was full
of fun and playfulness. He was early sent to Nottingham

(02:16):
to school with Reverend J. Blanchard, the instructor at kirk White.
Here he did not even learn Latin, although his elder
brothers had had classical instruction. French appears to have been
his only linguistic attainment, and the chief fact recorded of
his school days is this thrashing a tyrannical big boy

(02:37):
in the school. The school was over for him at
the age of fourteen, and he was placed with the
chemist at nowark, soon finding his position irksome, His friendship
with a youth who was preparing for his medical career
led him to long for a similar course, and ultimately
his father was induced to send him to Edinburgh, whither

(02:59):
he wented in October eighteen o nine. He had already
indicated his future eminence by rising very early to study
medicine and chemistry, and giving as his reason, I am
determined to be a great man. At Edinburgh, he quickly
distinguished himself by his diligent study of anatomy. He was

(03:20):
recognized as a student of the first rank, and was
chosen Senior President of the Royal Medical Society in eighteen eleven.
Doctor Bixby says of him, few men have changed during
their progress through life so little as Marshall Hall. As
he began, so he ended, delighting in the labor, the

(03:41):
labor itself of investigation, all the stories of knowledge which
his predecessors had either gathered or created. Marshall Hall was
eager to acquire a hearty and during constitution seconding all
his efforts. All his energies were directed to the formation
of the skillful bedside physician, that is, to the alleviation

(04:05):
and cure of disease, it was said of him Paul Nevertires.
During his three years studentship he never once missed a lecture.
He graduated in June eighteen twelve and was almost at
once appointed resident house physician to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Here his love of order, his zeal and spirit of

(04:27):
inquiry found full scope, and he took extreme pains in
the study of diagnosis. He gave a voluntary course of
lectures on the principles of Diagnosis in eighteen thirteen, which
were the basis of his well known work first published
in eighteen seventeen. His usefulness to the younger students in

(04:47):
the hospital was very great, and equally striking was his
good example of purity of life and conversation and constant cheerfulness.
His pure mindedness was characteristic through life. Marshall Hall never
attached himself to any man of course, mind or manners.
During his last year at Edinburgh, the young physician attracted

(05:10):
towards London practice, was prudently weighing the cost and risk
of such an enterprise. He decided in favor for a
more modest course, a provincial practice, waiting till his book
and diagnosis should be matured as in later life, so
now he was strong in hope, inflexible for truth and justice,

(05:32):
but inexperienced in the ways of the world, and unable
to cope with the cunning or dissemble with the faults.
After a visit to Paris for some months, he proceeded
to Girtingten and on to Berlin to visit the medical schools,
walking alone and on foot from Paris to Girtingen more

(05:52):
than six hundred miles in November eighteen fourteen. After a
brief period of practice in Bridgewater, he commenced practice at
Nottingham in February eighteen seventeen, and with remarkable rapidity, attained
a leading position. In eighteen seventeen his work on the
diagnosis of diseases appeared, and at once marked him out

(06:15):
as a man of the highest originality. Applying accurate observation
and classification of symptoms to the detection and distinction of diseases.
Of this book, the Lancet of August fifteenth, eighteen fifty
seven remarked comprehensive, lucid, exact and reliable. This work has

(06:37):
in the main stood the test of forty years trial.
A better has not been produced. When doctor Bailey, nephew
of John Hunter and President of the College of Physicians,
versaw A Marshall Hall, he complimented him on being the
son of the author of so extraordinary work as that
on diagnosis. Being modestly told that he himself was the author,

(07:01):
Billy exclaimed, impossible. It would have done credit to the
greatest headed philosopher in our profession. In eighteen eighteen Hall
published a work on the affections usually denominated bilious, nervous,
et cetera, and in eighteen twenty an essay in which
the prevalent custom of bleeding was attacked, especially in certain

(07:23):
affections occurring after childbirth, which under that treatment almost invariably
proved fatal. In eighteen twenty two this was followed by
a small volume on the Symptoms and History of Diseases,
which was especially valuable in treating of the detection of
internal diseases. In eighteen twenty four appeared his important paper

(07:46):
on the effects of the loss of blood in the
medical Chiburgical Transactions, published also in an expanded form in
his Medical Essays in the same year. Before this time,
the lancet was in hourly use and Marshall Hall termed
it a minute instrument of mighty mischief. Almost all pain

(08:07):
in any complaint, quickness of pulse, headache, intolerance of light
or noise being believed to arise from inflammation. Blood flowed
in torrents to subdue it. It was by his various
papers bearing on this question that doctor Hall became prominently known.
But the dropping of the lancet was an evident change

(08:29):
of procedure which the public as well as the profession,
could lay hold of. In eighteen twenty five, the young
enemy of the lancet was elected physician to the Nottingham
Hospital by a large majority of votes, and the best
practice of the neighboring counties was his. He was unremittingly

(08:49):
employed in his walks and riotes, almost heathless of external occurrences,
absorbed in contemplation at home, ever busy in his life
or his laboratory, making chemical experiments from which numerous valuable
memoirs arose, never accepting invitations of pleasure, unwearied in his

(09:11):
attentions to the sick poor whom he saw gratuitously, he
economized time by riding, being the good horseman, riding through
the country on pitch dark nights without accidents. He treated
his horses well and earned their affection. How is it
that your horses never fall? A friend inquired, I never

(09:32):
give them time to fall, was the reply. The Bible
constantly at his side was another mark of Marshall Hall,
and he was ever ready to discourse on the wisdom
and benevolence of God, as shown in the structure of
the human body. London continued to attract the popular Nottingham physician.
Doctor Vealie had predicted that if he came to London

(09:55):
he would be the leading physician in five years. Sir
Henry Alfred, who succeeded him as President of the College
of Physicians, termed Marshall Hall a few years afterwards, the
rising son of the profession. We cannot wonder that a
visit to London in August eighteen twenty six resulted in

(10:16):
his remaining there. His Noddingham patients, deeply regretting his removal,
continued to consult him by letter, and his first year
in town produced eight hundred pounds, a remarkable instance of
quick success. In eighteen twenty eight he published commentaries on
diseases of females with graphic plates depicting conditions of parts

(10:40):
such as the tongue, lips, nails, et cetera, which he
first associated with various disorders of women. He continued his
series of careful papers on subjects connected with blood letting.
His writings on these two subjects produced him a considerable
portion of his early practice time. Marshall Hall married in

(11:02):
eighteen twenty nine, and soon afterwards settled in Manchester Square,
where he lived for twenty years. Desiring to become a
fellow of the Royal Society, he entered upon his special
research on the circulation of the blood, the results of
which he might communicate to the Society. After carefully inspecting

(11:23):
under the microscope the blood flow in the transparent parts
of frogs, toads, nudes, et cetera, he arrived at the
conclusion that all the blood changes and all nutrition and
absorption by the material tissues, are affected in the minute
or capillary channels between the arteries and the veins. The

(11:44):
paper founded upon his research was read before the Royal
Society in eighteen thirty one, but was refused to place
in the Philosophical Transactions. Yet an equally great man, Johannes Smuller,
the leading German physiologist pronounced his paper one of extraordinary interest.

(12:05):
It was separately published in eighteen thirty two. The Royal Society, however,
did not reject Marshall Hall's next paper, on the inverse
ratio between respiration and irritability in the Animal Kingdom, which
has been pronounced one of the most beautiful examples of
widely extended observations and previously disjointed facts, all brought together

(12:29):
and rented harmonious by the insight and genius of a
master mind. From the latter subject, the investigator passed to
that of hibernation, his views on which also found acceptance
with the Royal Society. One feature in his experiments on
this subject was an ingenious apparatus for ascertaining the temperature

(12:51):
of the bat without disturbing its winter sleep. By this
time Marshall Hall had quite a little menagerie in his
house of animals whose physiology he was investigating. Mice, hedgehogs, bats, birds, snakes, frogs, toads, newts.
Fishes were in turn laid under contribution abheorign cruelty as

(13:14):
utterly as a man could. He yet saw the absolute
necessity of discovering in the first instance, by experiments on animals,
truths which were of vital importance both to men and brutes.
Mister Henry Smith of Torrington Square was his diligent associate
in these inquiries. Doctor Hallis said of him, I never

(13:37):
knew a person so accurate in his information and so
devoid of selfishness. His interest in my research is never flagged.
He was true to his appointments as the clock itself.
While the papers refused a place in the Philosophical Transactions,
were going through the press to appear as a critical
and experimental essay on the circulation of the blood. A

(14:01):
serious accident happened to a portion of the manuscript. It
was sent from time to time by stagecoach to Messr
Steely Printers at Thames Ditton, and on the evening of
William the Force's coronation, a packet containing the only record
of a considerable series of experiments was stolen from the coach.

(14:23):
This most serious loss could only be repeated by a
repetition of the experiments which doctor Hall at once set
about with most Christian economity. Early in eighteen thirty two,
Marshall Hall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
and In the same year he published another paper on
the effects of loss of blood in the medical chiurgical transactions.

(14:48):
The original papers on practical medicine which were produced during
this period are too numerous to be mentioned here. We
must hasten to give an account of Marshall Hall's great
researches on the ref flex functions of the spinal cord.
It was while he was examining the circulation of the
blood in the neut's lung that Marshall Hall noted the

(15:09):
fact from which his great discoveries arose. The note's head
had been cut off, Thus its life in the ordinary
acceptation was destroyed. The tale was afterwards separated. I now
touched the external integument with the point of a needle.
It moved with energy, assuming various curvlinear forms. What was

(15:33):
the nature of this phenomenon. I had not touched a mouscle.
I had not touched a muscular nerve. I had not
touched the spinal marrow. I had touched a cutaneous nerve.
That the influence of this touch was exerted through the
spinal marrow was demonstrated by the fact that the phenomenon
ceased when the spinal marrow was destroyed, it was obvious

(15:57):
that the same influence was reflected along a muscular nerve
to the muscles, for the phenomenon again ceased when those
nerves were divided, and thus we had the most perfect
evidence of a reflex or diastoltic or diecentric action.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
The importance of this discovery.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
May be gathered from the fact that but few considerable
advances in the physiology of the nervous system had hitherto
been made, the most important being that of Sir Charles Bell,
proving that there were separate nerve fibers of motion and
of sensation, and that they entered different portions of the
spinal cord and brain. Doctor Andrew Witt of Edinburgh had

(16:42):
published in seventeen fifty one a work in which he
detailed the movements which a frog's trunk was able to
execute after its head had been cut off, and had
naturally referred these movements to the spinal cord. But the
import of such actions was not understood the mechanism by
which they were executed. Somehow, these observations led to no

(17:05):
new principles, But the truly original mind of Marshall Hall
traveled beyond the first facts to trace the process, and
he at last comprehended the nature of such x as
the involuntary closure of the eyelets independent of will, for
the purpose of preventing the ambition of injurious matter, or

(17:26):
of protecting the eye against injury. The processes of swallowing, chalking, vomiting,
coughing were now for the first time explained further, in
pursuance of Marshall Hall's practicality of object, many cases of
injury to the nervous system became more or less intelligible.

(17:47):
In paralysis of the brain, with the medulla of ugada
and spinal cord were uninjured, it was understood how the
animal functions could be maintained, and how in cases where
the patient was unable by any exercise of the will
to clench his hand, yet the stimulus of a rough
stick on the sensory nerves of the palm of the

(18:07):
hand was sufficient to bring about a forcible grasp, this
being a simple reflex act in which this final cord
was concerned. The first breath of a nubleent infant, the
spasmodic closure of the larynx in convulsions fits of spasmodic
asthma et cetera. Were seemed to be reflex in their nature,

(18:30):
and in many disorders which had hitherto baffled durative efforts,
they became possible because the first great step had been
taken the understanding of the phenomena. These discoveries proved so
far reaching in their bearing that their establishment in following
out were the work of years of almost constant oil.

(18:51):
It is estimated that from the period of his first
experiments to the close of his life, no fewer than
thirty five thousand hours were occupied by doctor Hall in
work strictly connected with the subject. The discovery was first
made known to the Zoological Society on November twenty seventh,
eighteen thirty two. A fuller and further account was given

(19:14):
to the Royal Society in eighteen thirty three and published
in the Transactions. It was immediately translated into German and
inserted in Berlin's Archive. Yet most of the leading authorities
in England, with the fatality which attends discoveries in proportion
to their greatness, made Marshall Hall the object of obloquy,

(19:38):
and denounced him as the propagator of absurd and idle theories.
In eighteen thirty seven, a second memoir was read before
the Royal Society, but was rejected from its transactions, and
in the most unscientific spirit. Doctor Hall's offer to show
his experiments before a committee was not exceeded to even

(20:00):
his proposal to withdraw from practice for five years in
order to study the subject without interruption secured him no
better reception. Moreover, the medical press, with the exception of
the Lance Act and a very few others, denounced Marshall
Hall virulently. In one number of quarterly journal no fewer

(20:23):
than four articles attacked the discovery, one denying its originality
while allowing it to be true. Another denounce in Guchtorhalf's
views as new but not true. The long persistence of
this opposition was almost incredible. For years, one journal kept
it up through every number. Each step was disputed, and

(20:45):
what was indisputable was depreciated. Ancient works were disinterred in
the vain hope of robbing him of his originality. Complete
anticipations were exultingly announced. On the one hand, he was
accused of steal in his ideas from old writers. On
the other, contemporaries started up and claimed the discovery as theirs,

(21:07):
while some combated its truth and never ceased carevailing, while
the Royal Society refused him any honors, and in eighteen
forty seven, ten years after the last paper, rejected another
which he sent in detailing in experimental research on the
relation of galvanism to the nervous and muscular tissues. Marshall

(21:30):
Hall never ceased his investigations. He did not, however, like
some few men of originality, disdained to reply to attacks.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
He was even.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Anxious to refute any and every misstatement made about him
and his work, his view being it would not be
truthful in me, and why should I fear to declare
the truth I appeal From the first half of the
nineteenth century to the second. I am as certain of
the truth of what I have advanced as I am

(22:01):
of my own existence. But while his opponents denounced him
as irritable and thin skinned, it is testified of him
that his temper was never affected. Neither petulance nor gloom
clouded his life. He never wrote an anonymous, unfavorable review.
Nothing delighted his benevolent heart, says his widow, more than

(22:23):
to praise others when he could conscientiously do so, And
never can I forget the sparkle of his eye and
his pleasant smile when he had written something in favor
of any professional brother. Practice now flowed in upon doctor Hall.
His researchers gave him an insight into diseases and disorders

(22:43):
of the nervous system which no one had as yet approached.
Large numbers of patience came to consult him personally or
sent for him, without the intervention of a general practitioner.
Doctor Russell Reynolds says that his new memos Law on
the Nervous System eighteen forty three described with remarkable ingenuity

(23:06):
the mechanism of the convulsive paroxysm and of many other
affections assuming a paroxymal type. To doctor Marshall, Hall is
due the merit of having rescued the obscure class of
convulsive affections from a region of utter unintelligibility. The act

(23:26):
of strychnia as a spinal excitement or in small doses,
as a spinal tonic.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
The direction general, regemonal.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
And medical of the epileptic patient in order to avoid
all the excitements of convulsive action. The recommendation of trichyotomy
in viyngeal epilepsy and the simple but beautiful ready method
in asphyxia were among the later efforts of doctor Hall's
great genius. The two prominent features of his treatment were

(23:57):
simplicity and perseverance. We have seen numerous cases in which
his administration of simple appearance, together with strictly regimental measures,
had wrought extraordinary cures. And we know of previously paraplegic
men now well who, under his direction took strychnia for

(24:18):
much longer than a year, and of so called epileptics
was slowly recovered from the most frightful combination of symptoms
while kept by doctor Hall for sixteen or eighteen months
under the influence of mercury. Even under the heaviest strain
of practice, he found time to continue his researches and
to publish his experience in eighteen forty five. In eighteen

(24:42):
forty six appeared two small volumes of practical Observations and
Suggestions in Medicine, in which a great number of medical
subjects were treated in so concise and telling a way
that they were immediately welcomed by a large class of readers.
A chapter on the use of alcoholic lotionhnphysis polmanalis is

(25:04):
said to have been the means of saving many lives.
Another on the temper disease is most interesting the student
of human nature as well as of medicine. A friend,
mister Henry Gregory of herne Hill, who had much professional
and friendly intercourse with Doctor Hall, says of him in

(25:25):
debate or conversational argument. Nothing seemed to escape his penetration.
His minuteness in bringing out little things which others thought.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Not of was remarkable.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
With one little atom, so to speak, a light which
shine forth from him so brilliantly that I could only
sit and admire his remarkable mental gifts. He was a
great man and a genius, and like all the truly great,
made no parade. He was the educator of the intellect.
His domain was pure scientific research. The earnest activity of

(25:59):
his mind made him proceed, and every advance he made
was a clearing away of error and an establishment of truth.
In emergencies, he was both prompt and cautious. What anxious
excitement surrounded him, it did not disturb his judgment. In
dangerous and difficult cases, he was always calm. His deep

(26:20):
sense of duty and responsibility was unbending. There is a
universal concurrence of testimony as to his great success in
gaining his patient's confidence. Young and old looked with delight
for his visits. He would always direct the responsible nurves
most precisely and indeavor by every possible device to secure

(26:42):
that his special treatment should be carried out. His sergeant
and pointed questions not infrequently discovered hidden seizures, as he
called them, which had been totally unsuspected or uncomprehended by
patients of friends. His power of devising a remedy his amusing,
illustrated by his prescription to an indolent lady that she

(27:04):
was dwalk daily to the serpentine from her home and
dip her finger in it. The desirability of healthy mental
occupation and the encouragement of happiness and pleasing customs generally
were favorite subjects of his injunctions. Sympathy and kindliness shown
through his whole manner. A Scotch minister said to him,

(27:25):
you place your soul in the stead of your patient's soul.
But he abhorred all coaxing and wheedling. He hated can't
He would not lower his own lofty sense of independence
by having anything approaching to it. One might have supposed
so sympathetic a nature would have been compliant, but his
spirit and dignity were consistent with and equal to his sympathy.

(27:50):
It was but another phase of his noble character that
he could attend the poor and the needy middle class
without allowing or causing them to feel the slight, lightest
difference between themselves and the rich. This was the great
physician who never find a post as physician in any
London hospital. His medical teaching was almost entirely confined to

(28:13):
the schools outside the close circle of the hospital schools.
In eighteen thirty four to six he lectured on medicine
at the Aldersgate School, and then joined the Webb Street School,
that of the Grangers, taking a similar post. He also
gave lectures for two years at Sydenham College, established near

(28:35):
University College, but the exertion of lecturing concurrently at these.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Two was too much for.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
His voice, and he could not complete his course in
eighteen thirty nine. In eighteen forty two to six he
gave lectures on nervous diseases at Saint Thomas's Hospital Medical School.
In these he illustrated any points bound remarkable diagram portraits
a paralytical patients. His lectures were given extemporaneously, after careful preparation,

(29:06):
and delivered extremely clearly, without any showiness. When lecturing at
a school unattached to a hospital, he would invite his
pupils by turns to breakfast at his house, that they
might then see some of his fourer patients and go
over their cases with him. One instance of his thoughtfulness

(29:26):
for his pupils is enough to mark out any man.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
From among his fellows.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
A student was confined to his room for three or
four weeks by illness, and doctor Hall came regularly to
his lodgings to give him a resume of his.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Lecture and of what followed. It no wonder that an.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Affectionate feeling bound his class to him, and that no
lecturer ever was more attentively followed. The instances of the
affection and regard displayed in various ways between him and
his pupils are among the most interesting records in medical
by arts. Though he had been denied the fellowship of
the College of Physicians until eighteen forty one, Marshall Hall

(30:07):
was at last recognized by the College in being appointed
to deliver the Gastonian Electors in eighteen forty two and
the Cronian in eighteen fifty one and two. In these courses,
which were largely attended, he fully explained his views and
discoveries on the nervous system and nervous diseases, as well

(30:28):
as on general medical treatment. They were published later in
the form of synopsis of each course in quarto. Notwithstanding
his aversion to anything like strife in medical politics, Marshall
Hall took a prominent part in the formation of the
British Medical Association, and was at once elected on its

(30:48):
council and delivered the Oration on Medical Reform in eighteen forty.
He was in his true place in every philanthropic scheme
that needed medical advocacy. The open railway carriages were doomed
when he denounced them as dangerous to health. In human
flogging of soldiers was evidently condemned when he expounded the

(31:10):
character of the injuries inflicted on the cutaneous nerves and
the decree of shock to the heart. He even wrote
on the higher powers of numbers in the Mechanics magazine,
and took an interest in devising new forms of conjugation
for Greek nouns and verbs. He strongly abdicated a new
pharmacopeia based on the decimal system. He suggested in the

(31:34):
pamphlet as early as eighteen fifty new works for the
sewerage of the Thames, developing his ideas more elaborately in
eighteen fifty two and eighteen fifty six. Many of his
views and plans have since been adopted. Others must and
will still be carried out if London is to be
properly and healthily drained. It is not to be imagined

(31:58):
that Hall was so absorbed in still in practice, that
he could not take recreation, the pleasure of traveling, the
tonic of the open air, the change to the continent,
a tour to America, and he vigorously took these and
enjoyed himself with the abandon of a child. His delight
in splendid scenery was extreme, and he gratified his taste

(32:21):
in season by tours extending very widely over Europe. His
visit to America was especially undertaken in eighteen fifty three,
with the object of studying slavery by personal observation. In
New York and other cities, he gave lectures by request
illustrative of his discoveries from Quebec to New Orleans and

(32:43):
even the Vena. His fame had preceded him, and he
was feeded and listened to with as much ceremony and
enthusiasm as the retiring nature could be prevailed upon to endure.
At the Havana, he lectured in French for two hours,
and the medical students of the city visited him again
and again, thirsting for information at first hand. Doctor and

(33:07):
Missus Hall returned to England in April eighteen fifty four,
and very soon after he published his little volume on
the trueful Slavery of the United States. The subject was
one which most deeply interested Marshall Hall's philosophical and religious mind,
and it is significant of the depth of his philosophy

(33:29):
that he was far seeing enough to be certain that
unprepared abolition would be far from a perfect boom for
the slave, while yet he regarded the continuation of slavery
as wicked and degrading, financially ruinous, intending to generate wars.
His remedies were first education, second, the appointment of fair

(33:51):
task work, third the privilege of overwork to be paid for,
and the payments accumulated till freedom could be perfect with
the aid of proportionate additions by the federal and states governments.
Whether his plan could ever have been worked out will
now never be known. That many of the evils he

(34:12):
foresaw have followed persistence in slavery in sudden abolition this
matter of certainty. Marshall Hall's physical frame had been overtaxed
by his exertions and struggles, and he became increasingly libilties
of the alaryngitis. Taking another continental trip in the winter
of eighteen fifty four to five, he showed his vivid

(34:34):
intellectual energy by applying himself at Rome to the study
of Hebrew. He engaged a rabbi to teach him, and
when awake at night or at early dawn, he worked
at his new study with the zeal of a tripos candidate,
and never did a pupil make more rapid progress. He
ascended ve Silvius during the rupture of May eighteen fifty five,

(34:57):
a serious undertaking for a man of scl sixty five.
At Paris in the summer he wrote in three months
a work in French detailing his investigations on the spinal system,
dedicated to Monsieur Florens, who had always shown the most
generous appreciation of his labors as constituting a great epic

(35:18):
in physiology. Lewis the Great Physician, and his wife were
equally warm in the appreciation of an attachment to him.
On December fifth, eighteen fifty five, Marshall Hall was elected
a corresponding member of the French Academy for Science by
thirty nine votes out of forty one. On returning to

(35:40):
England towards the end of eighteen fifty five, Marshall Hall's
mind fastened with characteristic eagerness on a new subject suggested
by reading the Humane Society's rules to restore the apparently drowned.
He remarked, there is nothing in the treatment to restore respiration.
He at once thought of the question in the light

(36:01):
of his researches on the physiology of respiration, and when
he had mentally devised his system of restoration, proceeded to
make experiments to test them. Hitherto had been believed that
it was useless to attempt to restore those who had
been immersed three or four minutes. He said to the
secretary of the Humane Society, if we take this for

(36:24):
granted we shall do nothing. Surely it is worthwhile to
make the effort to restore after a longer period. His
plan for producing artificial respiration by turning the body first
on the face, then on the side, and repeating the
motion for a quarter of an hour, making equabal pressure
on the back of the chest when in the prone position,

(36:46):
removing it when rotating on the side, is known all
over the world as the Marshall Hall method and has
saved thousands of lives. Numerous details are added to increase
the efficiency of the treatment, but the humane society.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Looked coldly on the novel plan and long.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Persisted in ignoring it. The National Lifeboat Institution wisely adopted it.
The medical profession received it with acclamation. It was applied
in the revival of stillborn infants and the restoration of
those in danger of dying or asphyxia from other causes
than drowning. At the same time, when Palmer's trial for

(37:26):
poisoning was occurring, Doctor Hall due attention to the facility
with which the presence of strychnia could be proved by
administering any suspected batter to young frogs, which would be
effected by the five thousandth part of a grain of strynia.
But he now began to succumb to the effects of
his long continued vallady in the throat. Expectoration of blood

(37:51):
became more frequent, difficulty of swallowing increased. At times he
was near absolute starvation, and his sufferings were horrible, but
his patience and resignation marvelous. After months of terrible illness,
during which his cheerfulness never left him, he died on
the eleventh August eighteen fifty seven of ulceration of the

(38:13):
upper part of the gullet and windpipe. During his illness,
his mind was as active as ever. He wrote continually
his new ideas and worked out to fuller ends his
former discoveries. Throughout he was especially bright and affectionate to
all little children. The manner in which he entered into
children's delights was most exquisite to witness. His Christian faith

(38:37):
was unclouded. As he said, religion was to him the
principal thing in the simplicity, beauty, and happiness of his character.
He resembled Sir Charles Well, of whom he was the
Truth's successor. End of Section twelve