A mere attempt to refer to the many and various obligations which the continental professors of medicine have laid upon mankind during the last half century, would fill a book. They were well known and spoken of in my youth, and the names of many learned foreigners were at that period associated in my bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration. It was some time after I had once resolved to go abroad, before I fixed upon Paris as my destination. _Langanbeck_, the greatest operator of his day, the _Liston_ of Germany, was performing miracles in Hanover. _Tiedemann_, a less nimble operator, but a far more learned surgeon, had already made the medical schools of Heidelberg famous by his lectures and still valued publications; whilst the lamented and deeply penetrating _Stromeyer_--the tutor and friend of our own amiable and early-lost Edward Turner--had established himself already in _Goettingen_, and drawn around him a band of enthusiastic students who have since done honour to their teacher, and in their turn become eminent amongst the first chemists of the day. With such and similar temptations from many quarters, it was not easy to arrive at a steady determination. I had hardly thought of Paris, when--as it often happens--a thing of a moment relieved me from difficulty and doubt, and helped me at once to a decision. A letter one morning by the post induced me to set out for the giddiest and yet most fascinating of European cities. James M'Linnie--who, by the way, died only the other day of dysentery at Hong-Kong, a few hours after landing with the troops upon that luckless island--was an old hospital acquaintance, and, like me, _cutting and hewing_ his way to fame and fortune. He had distinguished himself at Guy's, and quitted that school with every reasonable prospect of success in his profession. He had not only passed muster before the high and mighty court of examiners, but had received on the occasion the personal warm congratulations of Abernethy and Sir Astley Cooper; the former of whom, indeed, before he asked M'Linnie a question, gave him confidence in his peculiar way, by requesting him "not to be a frightened fool, for Mr. Abernethy was not the brute the world was pleased to make him out;" and after a stiff and rough examination shook the student heartily by the hand, and pronounced him "not an ass, like all the world, but a sensible shrewd fellow, who, instead of muddling his head with books, had passed his days, very properly, where real life was only to be met with"--_videlicet_, in the dead-house.