FIG. FACE PAGE 1. William Heberden, M.D., F.R.S. 2 2. Sir Thomas Watson, Bt., M.D., F.R.S. 4 3. Professor John Haviland, M.D., F.R.C.P. 6 4. Henry Jenkins, reputed to have lived 169 years 20 5. Thomas Parr, reputed to have lived 152 years 22 6. Katherine, Countess of Desmond, reputed to have lived 140 years 24 7. Petratsch Zortan, in his reputed 185th year 26 8. Hungarian husband and wife, reputed to be 172 and 164 years old respectively 36 9. Sir Henry Pitman, M.D., F.R.C.P., a medical centenarian 52 I INTRODUCTION The Linacre Foundation dating from 1524 is the oldest medical Lectureship in the University, for it was sixteen years later that the Regius Professorship of Physic was established by Henry VIII. Formerly this College Lectureship was held more or less indefinitely by Fellows of the College, with two eminent exceptions, namely, Sir George Paget and Dr. J. B. Bradbury; but in 1908 the Lectureship was made an annual and open appointment, and until this year no member of the College has held this office: I am therefore most deeply conscious of the high honour that has been conferred upon me. Though the statute that the Lecturer should explain Galen’s treatises _De Sanitate Tuenda_ and _De Methodo Medendi_ as translated by Linacre, or _De Elementis et Simplicibus_, has long lapsed, his first words should be directed to the pious memory of the founder; but as in 1908 the late Sir William Osler[1] devoted the first of the new series of Linacre Lectures to a sympathetic consideration of his brother scholar-physician, it would be worse than unwise to attempt more than the briefest reference. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--William Heberden, M.D., F.R.S., in his 86th year. Linacre Lecturer, 1734–38. From an engraving by James Ward of a portrait painted by Sir William Beechey, R.A.]