FERGUSSON, SIR WILLIAM, BART. (1808-1877), Brit ish surgeon, was born at Prestonpans, East Lothian, on March 20, 1808. He was a pupil at Edinburgh of the anatomist Robert Knox (1791-1862) whose demonstrator he was appointed at the age of twenty. In 1836 he succeeded Robert Liston as surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal infirmary, and went to London in 184o as professor of surgery in King's college, and surgeon to King's College hospital. Fergusson revived the operation for cleft-palate, which for many years had fallen into disrepute, and invented a special mouth-gag for the same. He also devised many other sur gical instruments, chief among which, and still in use to-day, are his bone forceps, lion forceps and vaginal speculum. In 1866 he was created a baronet. He died in London on Feb. so, 1877. Fer gusson introduced the practice of "conservative surgery," by which he meant the excision of a joint rather than the amputa tion of a limb. He was the author of an admirable historical work, The Progress of Anatomy and Surgery in the Nineteenth Century (1867), and of a System of Practical Surgery (1842), which went through several editions.