It is curious to find that in 1821 the function of the hospital as a
school for students of medicine was something of a novelty. The reform
seems to have been due to Abernethy.

In 1845, on 13th May, a unanimous resolution against female governors was
carried. Dr Moore adds that "about half a century later they were
admitted, and no disastrous consequences have ensued." In 1851 Miss
Elizabeth Blackwell was actually admitted as a student, and strange to
say with satisfactory results.

The author relates {154} how he was walking back to St Bartholomew's one
hot summer afternoon when he saw at a small second-hand book shop Paulus
Jovius' history of his own times, printed in 1550. Within it Woodhull
the collector had noted that he bought it at the sale of Dr Askew's
books. Next day Sir Norman met Robert Browning and mentioned the book to
him: "He had read it, and recalled passages in it, and told most
pleasantly how the bishop had concealed the manuscript in a chest . . .
when the Spaniards took Rome, and how a Spanish captain found out that
Paulus Jovius valued the manuscript, and so only gave it up on receiving
a promise of the emoluments of a living in the gift of the church" (ii.,
p. 539).

Sir George Burrows became physician in 1841:--"He did not hesitate to
express censure where he thought censure required. A clergyman at St
Bartholomew's rather aggressively invited his criticism on a sermon which
he had just delivered. 'Let me tell you, sir,' said Burrows, 'that many
a man has been put in a lunatic asylum for much less nonsense than you
preached to us to-day'" (ii., p. 561).

Dr Frederic John Farre was elected physician, 1854. Farre was captain of
Charterhouse School during Thackeray's first year there. And in _The
Adventures of Philip_ the author tells how one of the boys laughed
because Firmin's eyes "filled with tears at some ribald remark, and was
gruffly rebuked by Sampson major [_i.e._, Dr Farre], the cock of the
whole school; and with the question, 'Don't you see the poor beggar's in
mourning, you great brute?' was kicked about his business."

Percivall Pott was elected assistant surgeon at St Bartholomew's in 1745
and surgeon in 1749, holding office till 1787. There is in the hospital
a fine portrait of him in a crimson coat, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A very
old lady, whose mother's medical attendant had been dresser to Percivall
Pott, told Dr Moore, on the authority of the above practitioner, t