den in the year 1761.

"As soon as he had recovered his health sufficiently, he was, at his own request, bound an apprentice to a Mr. Watson, at that time settled in Kelso, and who had been for many years a surgeon in the navy. From this we may conclude that his views were not then directed to that branch of the medical profession in which he afterwards became so distinguished. It is not known how long he remained with Mr. Watson; but there is reason to suppose that he did not leave him till the autumn of 1766, when he returned to Edinburgh to pursue his medical studies.

"By his diligence and abilities he there attracted the notice of the late Dr. Gregory, at that time professor of the practice of physic; a man not more distinguished by his professional talents, than by his private worth, and by his just discernment and generous protection of merit. The countenance of so eminent a man was in itself highly honourable and advantageous to a young student; but Dr. Gregory does not appear to have confined himself to mere approbation, but to have assisted him with his advice, and interested himself in his wel fare with the activity of a friend. Mr. Clark had but too soon occasion for his professional assistance. The complaints in his stomach, which attacked him soon after the acci-, dent before mentioned, now increased to an alarming degree, aggravated most probably by his sedentary life and close application; and as they resisted all the remedies employed by Dr. Gregory to subdue them, he recommended it to Mr. Clark, as a last resource, to try the effects of a warm climate. In consequence of this advice, Mr. Clark's

him an appointment, as surgeon's mate, in the East India company's service a situation in which, with the advantage of a warm climate, he enjoyed that of an opportunity of obtaining medical experience; nor can it be doubted, from his father's circumstances and the numerous family he had to support, that the acquirement of an immediate provision was also a material object with him. I have not been able to learn the precise time of Mr Clark's leaving Edinburgh; but it is cer tain that he attended a course of medical lectures in London, before he entered on his appointment, as surgeon's mate, on board the Talbot Indiaman. In London he secured the good opinion of the celebrated Dr. William Hunter; and he often, through life, expressed his gratitude to him, for admitting him to his lectures without paying the usual fees. He knew how to estimate the spirit in which Dr. Hunter granted that indulgence, nor would his grateful disposition allow him to forget or depreciate any obligation, however small. It seems to me that such actions should not pass unnoticed: it is honourable to a young person to be thought worthy the patronage of eminent men; while, as proofs of their desire to encourage merit, such incidents, however trifling, reflect additional lustre on their abilities.

"On the 22d of March, 1768, the Talbot sailed from the Downs, and, after touching at St. Augustin's Bay in the island of Madagascar, anchored at Culpee, in the river of Bengal, on the 25th of August. In this situation the ship remained till the 22d of March, 1769; on which day, precisely a year after leaving the Downs, she began her voyage back to England. Mr. Clark,

оп

on his return, had a tedious and disagreeable voyage, not reaching Scilly till the 5th of January, 1770. During the absence of the Talbot from England, her crew suffered much from sickness, as well in the river of Bengal, as on the voyage home; and Mr. Clark's diligence and judgment appear to great ad. vantage, in the very accurate accounts he has preserved of the diseases, and of the methods of cure. On the 16th of February, 1771, he again sailed for India, in the same ship; reached Madras on the 25th of July, and, after remaining there a month, sailed for China, and arrived at Macao on the 19th of October, and Wampoa on the 25th. Here the Talbot continued till the 7th of March, 1772, when she be gan her voyage to England, and arrived in the Downs on the 1st of September. I have mentioned these few dates, as they enable us to judge of Mr. Clark's opportunities of making observations on the effects of long voyages, and of the climate of India on the human constitution, and of the diseases to which it is liable. To enter into details would extend this memoir much beyond the prescribed limits; they are preserved in his Observations on the diseases which prevail in long voyages to hot climates, a work first published in March, 1773. To what advantage Mr. Clark had turned his opportunities of obtaining professional experience, that work is an honorable proof; in the other object of his voyages, the improvement of his health, he was not so fortunate; his stomach complaints continued without remission in India, and seem indeed to have gathered additional force.

"The winter after his arrival in England was passed in London, and dedicated to a further attend

ance on the hospitals, and to finishing and superintending the publication of his work. It had been communicated to sir John Sylvester, by whose advice it was pub lished, and was dedicated to the court of directors of the company, from whom the author received a gratuity of a hundred guineas.

Mr. Clark had no encouragement to return to India for the esta blishment of his health, and the high reputation which his work deservedly acquired, gave him reasonable hopes that he could derive from his profession, at home, advantages superior to any which the service of the company offered. He now, therefore, resigned his situation, and, turning his views to the medical branch of the profession, procured a diploma from the university of St. Andrew's. He applied there instead of Edinburgh, because the rules of the latter university required a further attendance on the medical schools, which would have retarded his establish ment in practice.

"In the course of 1773, Dr. Clark settled as physician at Kelso, and soon acquired a considerable share of practice; but the situation was too limited to bound the views of a man who was conscious of such well-founded claims to public confidence, and he accordingly removed to Newcastle in 1775, upon Dr. Wilson's quitting it for London. He had now a wide field for the display of his abilities; but it must be acknowledged that he entered upon it under no common difficulties. Dr. Wilson, whose removal from Newcastle had induced him to settle there, had had but little business. The powerful recommendation of Dr. Askew had enabled Dr. Brown to take a decisive lead in the profession. Dr.

Hall,

Hall, a man of knowledge and talents, had also considerable prac, tice; and besides them there were other medical candidates for the public confidence, of very respectable characters and connections. It is not surprising that Dr. Clark, a stranger, and without introduction, advanced slowly against so powerful an opposition. But though the emolument of the profession was, in a great degree, preoccupied, he had an ample range for medical observation in the diseases of the poor; and neither his zeal for the improvement of his profession, nor his humanity, permitted him to neglect it. In his attendance on them, Dr. Clark could not fail to perceive the hardships which those laboured under from the want of medicines and advice, whose cases excluded them from the infirmary. To relieve this numerous class of sufferers, dispensaries had, for some years, been established in most of the principal towns of Great Britain; and it is manifest, that, without an institution of that nature, the provisions for the relief of the poor in sickness must be incomplete. These considerations induced Dr. Clark to propose the establishment of a dispensary, in Newcastle, in the beginning of April, 1777; a proposal in which he was joined by his friend Mr. Anderson, a surgeon of great respectability.

"Strange as it must now appear, the plan was immediately opposed by the physicians to the infirmary, as threatening destruction to that charity. It is probable the manner in which the proposal was made, might lead them to suspect that the conduct of the medical department was intended to be confined to the gentlemen who originally brought it forward; on which

account, Dr. Clark and his friend thought it right to express their desire to act in concert with the rest of the faculty: and thus, after an explanation had taken place between the parties, all opposition ceased, and the plan was, without delay, carried into execution.

"Though Dr Clark's chief object in recommending a dispensary to the inhabitants of Newcastle, was the relief of the poor, he did not overlook those arrangements which might render it the means of extending the limits of our art. He accordingly provided for keeping accurate journals of the patients admitted, and of their cases, by which the nature of prevailing epidemics might be ascertained, the history of diseases illustrated, and the success of the modes of treatment more ac curately known. He also drew up, and distributed among the poor who received relief at the dispensary, some very judicious rules for preventing the production and propagation of contagion: but this most important branch of the charity was left incomplete; no means of prevention were carried into the houses of the poor, nor was any board of health established for the purpose of enforcing the execution of the rules. Dr. Clark was, ne doubt, aware of this defect; nor could he expect that his plan would prove adequate to the eradication of contagion; but the funds of the charity were by no means equal to the establishment of a board of health, and to the cleansing and purifying the habitations of the poor. He therefore adopted the only means in his power. This de ficiency of the funds of the dispensary is very strongly stated in several of the early reports of its proceedings; and a lamentable proof of it is found in the failure of a pro

posal,

posal, made by Dr. Clark, for a ge neral inoculation, in 1779, which was abandoned solely on that account. This very desirable object was not accomplished till 1786, from which time it has been continued annually.

"In 1783, Dr. Clark published a posthumous tract of Dr. Dugaid Leslie, on the contagious catarrh which raged so widely during the preceding summer, together with a letter of his own to the author on the same subject. The work presents a very faithful history of the epidemic, with some judicious remarks on its treatment; but as it does not throw much additional light on that singular disease, his chief object in publishing it was probably to pay a tribute to the memory of his deceased friend, who was snatched by a pulmonary consumption from a profession, of which, had he lived, he would have proved an ornament.

"Doctor Clark's practice had been long increasing, and was now be come very extensive; but, unfortunately, while he reaped the fruit of his professional zeal and knowledge, he suffered every year more and more from ill health. His stomach complaints harassed him to a dreadful degree, and were accompanied by so great an irregularity in the action of the heart, especially on walking up an ascent, or other increased muscular motion, that he was led to suspect a local affection of that organ. Combined with this, he laboured under an almost total want of sleep, and all that endless train of sufferings which await on morbid irritability of the nervous system. These exhausting complaints did not, however, induce him to relax in his professional assiduity; and the effect of his great success in treating diseases, was 1806.

so great an increase of business, that for some time before Dr. Brown's decease he had the most extensive practice of any physician in Newcastle. On that event, which happened early in 1788, Dr. Clark was, without opposition, elected physician to the Infirmary.

"Notwithstanding the bad state of his health, and the multiplicity of his engagements, Dr. Clark found time to revise his work on the diseases which prevail in long voyages to hot climates, of which, in 1792, he published a new edition. The many valuable additions which it contains, furnish satisfactory evidence of the excellent use he had made of his extensive experience; and as he has incorporated into it the substance of his Olservations on Fevers, it is on this performance that his character as a medical writer rests. From this time the confidence of the public in his abilities daily increased, and soon put him in possession of as extensive business as has ever fallen to the share of any medical practitioner in the north of England.

"Dr. Clark had for some time called the attention of the governors to the defective state of the New castle Infirmary. The statutes for its regulation, which were first established in 1751, and of which the second and last edition was printed in the following year, had many of them fallen into disuse; and, from the great improvements in the management of hospitals introduced since that period, were unavoidably defective. A special court was therefore held November 6th, 1800, for their revisal, at which, in consequence of a report laid before them by Dr. Clark, it was resolved, That a committee of governors be appointed to take the sta tutes, rules, and orders, into consi

D

deration,