250 BI 0 GR AP HI C AL S'KET C HES.
to Leyden, which still retained a high reputation as a medical school ; and he
studied there under the medical teachers of that time.
At the termination of the war Mr. Home settled in Edinburgh, and graduated
in the year 1750, choosing for the subject of his inaugural dissertation, the
remittent fever which had prevailed very severely in the army- a treatise which
is yet quoted as one of the best on the disease, In 1768 he obtained the
Professorship of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh, the duties of
which he executed for thirty years with great industry, zeal, and reputation.
During this period he contributed, along with his other eminent colleagues, to
maintain the high character of the University of Edinburgh as a medical school.
He died on the 15th of February 1813, at the very advanced age of ninety-four,
preserving his faculties entire till within a short period of his death.
Few physicians have done more to promote the advancement of medicine,
as a science and as an art, than Dr. Home. He published several valuable and
esteemed works. His " Principia Jledicinar I' contains a very excellent and
scientific history of diseases. It is written in correct and elegant Latinity,
showing his intimate acquaintance with the best ancient classical authors. This
work contributed materially to raise his reputation, especially on the Continent,
where.it was soon adopted by several professors as a text-book. It has undergone
several editions ; and even now, after the lapse of three-fourths of a century,
and notwithstanding the great improvements in medicine, it is still one of the
best and most useful compendiums on the subject. Dr. Home added numerous
and very important facts to the history and treatment of many diseases, and
contributed much to establish the art of medicine on the basis of experience and
observation. He was the first who described " the Croup " as a separate and
distinct disease ; and his account of it first called the attention of physicians to
it. Although, since its first publication, much has been added to its pathology,
yet Dr. Home's treatise still remains as a standard and much esteemed work on
the history and treatment of this very fatal disease. His works, entitled " Medical
Facts and Experiments," and his " Clinical Experiments, Histories, and Dissertations,"
cqntain a most valuable collection of very important factls regarding the
history of diseases and their treatment ; and they introduced several new remedies,
many of which still stand the test of the experience of more than half a century.
Dr. Home did not confine his observations and publications to medicine
alone. His work, entitled " Experiments on Bleaching," for which he obtained
a gold medal from the Honourable Board of Trustees for the Improvement of
Manufactures in North Britain, was published in the year 1756, by request of
the Board ; and he received many testimonies of eminent manufacturers, whose
art it had much improved. His treatise on Dunse Spa, published in 1751,
brought that mineral spring into much notice. His Essay on the Principles of
Agriculture long continued to be the best scientific account of that most
important art, and obtained for him the first Professorship of Agriculture in the
University of Edinburgh, which he afterwards resigned in' favour of the late
Dr. Coventry.
