SYME, JAMES, was born in 1799, in the county of Fife, and received a thorough educa tion in art and medicine, in the university of Edinburgh. In his 19th year he began his anatomical studies under Liston, who appointed him his demonstrator. From 1825 to 1832, be lectured on surgery in the Edinburgh school, and, while generously refusing to lecture in opposition to his old master in the Edinburgh infirmary, he established a hos pital at his own expense, where he delivered a clinical course for four years. In 1831, appeared his well-known treatise on The Excision of Diseased Joints; and in 1832, his Principles of Surgery, which has since gone through many editions, and which has established his reputation as a teacher of the first rank. In 1833, he was elected to the chair of surgery in the university of Edinburgh, which he filled with the highest dis tinction. In 1847, he gave up his Edinburgh chair to fill that vacated in London by the death of Liston; but collegiate misunderstandings induced him, after six months, to return to Edinburgh. As an operator, Mr. Syme had no superior; as a teacher, he
had no equal. His innovations in the practice of his art were characterized by so much ingenuity, controlled by scientific caution, that they were adopted by all really great surgeons. The best of his pupils, who are numerous, and scattered over every quarter of the globe, have been heard to declare that their soundest ideas in surgery are derived from Syme. Beside the works already named, he was the author of valuable treatises on diseases of the rectum; on the pathology and practice of surgery; on the urethra and fistula, in perineo; on incised wounds, etc. He died June 26, 1870. See the Memoir by Dr. Paterson (1874).