The Duke of Wellington having insisted on seeing him out of his usual hours, and abruptly entering his room, was asked by the doctor how he got in. ’By that door,’ was the reply. ’Then,’ said Abernethy,’ I recommend you to make your exit by the same way.’ He refused to attend George IV. until he had delivered his lecture at the hospital, in consequence of which he lost a royal appointment. To a lady who complained that on holding her arm over her head she felt pain, he said: ’Then what a fool you must be to hold it up!’ He was fond of calling people fools. A countess consulted him, and he offered her some pills, when she said she could never take a pill. ’Not take a pill! What a fool you must be!’ was the courteous reply. Abernethy usually cut patients short by saying: ’I have heard enough. You have heard of my book?’ ’Yes.’ ’Then go home and read it.’ This book gives admirable rules for dieting and general living, though few persons would be willing to comply with them rigidly; he himself did not. When someone told him that he seemed to live like most other people, he replied: ’Yes, but then I have such a devil of an appetite!’ One day a lawyer suffering from dyspepsia, brought on by want of exercise and good living, went to consult Abernethy. As he came out of the consulting-room he met another lawyer, a friend of his. ’What the devil brought you here?’ said one, and the other echoed the question, and the reply of each was the same. ’What has he prescribed for you?’ asked the newcomer. The prescription was produced and read as follows: ’Read my book, p. 72. J. Abernethy.’ The first lawyer agreed to wait for his friend whilst he went to consult the doctor. In about a quarter of an hour he came out, well pleased apparently with his interview. ’Well, what is your prescription?’ inquired lawyer number one. Number two produced a slip of paper, on which was written: ’Read my book, p. 72. J. Abernethy.’ That was what each got for his guinea. But Abernethy deserves praise for three utterances, viz., that mind is a miraculous energy added to matter, and not the result of certain modes of organization, as modern scientists maintain; that an operation is a reproach to surgery, and that a patient should be cured without recourse to it; and that vivisection experiments are morally wrong and physiologically unsafe, because unreliable. That Dr. Abernethy, with his uncouth manners and vulgar repartee, should have been so successful in his profession is a marvel; certainly few people of the present day would tolerate such rudeness as his. Possibly in former days the doctor’s distinctive dress had a secret influence of its own. The gold-headed cane, the elaborate shirt-frill, the massive snuff-box, tapped so argumentatively in consultation, the pompous manner and overbearing assurance, no doubt exercised a spell with which we are unacquainted now.