Sir Victor Horsley.

MANY years ago G. K. Chesterton called the English 'the eccentrics of the earth' because of their unawareness of the 'very existence of some of their most extraordinary claims to glory and distinction'. He referred to a neglect of Chaucer the Father of English Poetry but today, with science in the ascendant, his stricture may be applied to the medical profession for allowing obscurity to threaten the memory of the Father of Neurosurgery whose boon to mankind is more universally applicable than any gift of letters, but whose splendid achievements, and no less splendid aspirations for the betterment of his countrymen, appear to have shrunken in the general mind to a single eponym, 'Horsley's wax'. How fitting, therefore, that the Osler Club of London, a bastion against neglect, should have held this commemorative meeting! Fifty years have elapsed since Sir Victor Horsley's death on active service in Mesopotamia. A reappraisal of his career is overdue. The venue-the National Hospital which he graced with such distinctioncould not have been more appropriate. Victor Horsley was born at 2 Tor Villas, Campden Hill, Kensington on Tuesday 14 April 1857. He was the son ofJohn Calcott Horsley, an artist, but his earliest known ancestor was a medical practitioner. This man who practised successfully in Carlisle early in the eighteenth century deserted his family at the height of his career. His wife with her two sons followed him to London but he was not seen again. One of the boys became a cabinet maker. His son, William, Victor Horsley's grandfather, was born in Swallow Street, Golden Square, in 1774. In boyhood William Horsley assisted his father in the manufacture of pianoforte keys and in this unorthodox way embarked on a musical career. He succeeded John Wall Calcott as Organist to the Asylum for Female Orphans in Westminster Bridge Road. Later he married Calcott's eldest daughter. By 1823 when they moved to 1 High Row, Kensington Gravel Pits, they had five children, Mary who married Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John an art student at Sass's Academy, Fanny, Sophy, and Charles Edward who followed his father's bent and was at one period Mendelssohn's pupil. Fanny and Sophy Horsley were amusing, talented girls. A collection of their letters', entitled Mendelssohn and his Friends in Kensington has been published and gives a vivid picture of their home. It was a household where, after God, music held a supreme place, and after music, books, languages, and ideas. To an aunt Sophy wrote: