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Sir William Lawrence, 1st Baronet |
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Sir William Lawrence, 1st Baronet FRCS FRS (July 16, 1783–July 05, 1867) was an English surgeon who became President of the Royal College of Surgeons of London and Serjeant Surgeon to the Queen.
In his mid thirties he published two books of his lectures which contained pre-Darwinian ideas on man's nature and, effectively, on evolution. He was forced to withdraw the second (1919) book after fierce criticism; the Lord Chancellor ruled it blasphemous. Lawrence's transition to repectability occurred gradually, and his surgical career was highly successful.
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Lawrence was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, the son of the town's chief physician.1 At 15 he was apprenticed to, and lived with, John Abernethy (FRS 1796) for 5 years. He married Louisa (1803–1855), the daughter of a Mayfair haberdasher, who built up social fame through horticulture. Their son, Sir Trevor Lawrence, was for many years President of the Royal Horticultural Society.
Lawrence had a long and successful career as a surgeon. He reached the top of his profession, and just before his death the Queen rewarded him with a baronetcy (see Lawrence Baronets). He had for many years declined such honours, and family tradition was that it was to facilitate his son's courtship of an aristocratic young woman, which did not in fact succeed!2 Lawrence suffered an attack of apoplexy whilst descending the stairs at the College of Surgeons and died on July 5, 1867 at his house, 18 Whitehall Place, London.
Said to be a brilliant scholar, Lawrence was the translator of several anatomical works written in Latin, and was fully conversant with the latest research on the continent. He had good looks and a charming manner, and was a fine lecturer. His quality as a surgeon was never questioned.3 Lawrence helped the radical campaigner Thomas Wakley found the Lancet journal, and was prominent at mass meetings for medical reform in 1826.4 Elected to the Council of the RCS in 1828, he became its President in 1846, and again in 1855.5
During Lawrence's surgical career he held the posts of Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons (1815-1922); Surgeon to the hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, and to the London Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye; Demonstrator of Anatomy, then Assistant Surgeon, later Surgeon, St Bartholomew's Hospital (1824-1865). Later in his career, he was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary, later Serjeant Surgeon, to the Queen. His specialty was ophthalmology, although he practised in and lectured and wrote on all branches of surgery. Shelley, Pugin, and Queen Victoria were among his patients.
Despite reaching the height of his profession, with the outstanding quality of his surgical work, and his excellent textbooks,6 Lawrence is mostly remembered today for an extraordinary period in his early career which brought him fame and notoriety, and led him to the brink of ruin.
At the age of 30, in 1813, Lawrence was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1815 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Surgery by the College of Surgeons. His lectures started in 1816, and the set was published the same year.7 The book was immediately attacked by Abernethy and others for materialism, and for undermining the moral welfare of the people. One of the issues between Lawrence and his critics concerned the origin of thoughts and consciousness. For Lawrence, as for ourselves, mental processes were a function of the brain. Abernethy and others thought differently: they explained thoughts as the product of vital acts of an immaterial kind. Abernethy also published his lectures, which contained his support for John Hunter's vitalism, and his objections to Lawrence's materialism.8
In subsequent years Lawrence vigorously contradicted his critics until, in 1819, he published a second book, known by its short title of the Natural history of man.9 The book caused a storm of disapproval from conservative and clerical quarters for its supposed atheism, and within the medical profession because he advocated a materialist rather than vitalist approach to human life. He was linked by his critics with such other 'revolutionaries' as Thomas Paine and Lord Byron.
Hostility from the established Church of England was guaranteed. "A vicious review in the Tory Quarterly Review execrated his materialist explanation of man and mind"; 101112 the Lord Chancellor, in the Court of Chancery (1822), ruled his lectures blasphemous, on the grounds that the book contradicted Holy Scripture (the Bible). This destroyed the book's copyright.13 Lawrence was also repudiated by his own teacher, Abernethy, with whom he had already had a controversy about John Hunter's teachings. Faced by persecution, perhaps prosecution, and certainly ruin through the loss of surgical patients, Lawrence withdrew the book. The time had not yet arrived when a science which dealt with man as a species could be conducted without interference from the religious authorities.
It is interesting that the Court of Chancery was acting, here, in its most ancient role, that of a court of conscience. This entailed the moral law applied to prevent peril to the soul of the wrongdoer through mortal sin. The remedy was given to the plaintiff (the Crown, in this case) to look after the wrongdoer's soul; the benefit to the plaintiff was only incidental. This is also the explanation for specific performance, which compels the sinner to put matters right. The whole conception is mediæval in origin.
It is difficult to find a present-day parallel. The withholding of copyright, though only an indirect financial penalty, was both an official act and a hostile signal. We do not seem to have a word for this kind of indirect pressure, though Suppression of dissent comes closer than censorship. Perhaps the modern 'naming and shaming' comes closest. The importance of respectability, reputation and public standing were critical in this case, as so often in traditional societies.
After repudiating his book, Lawrence returned to respectability, but not without regrets. He wrote to William Hone, who was acquitted of libel in 1817, explaining his expediency and commending Hone's "greater courage in such matters".14
He continued to espouse radical ideas and, led by the famous radical campaigner Thomas Wakley, Lawrence was part of the small group which launched The Lancet, and wrote material for it. Lawrence wrote pungent editorials, and chaired the public meetings in 1826 at the Freemason's Tavern. These meetings, for members of the College, were attended by about 1200 people,15 were called to protest against the way surgeons abused their privileges to set student fees and control appointments. Also, Lawrence was co-owner of the Aldersgate Private Medical Academy (with Frederick Tyrrell). These private medical academies provided some of the best teaching of anatomy and physiology, but were constantly under threat from the Royal Colleges.
In his opening speech Lawrence criticised the by-laws of the College of Surgeons for preventing all but a few teachers in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen from issuing certificates of attendance at preparatory lectures. He pointed out that Aberdeen and Glasgow were bereft of cadavers for dissection, without which anatomy could not be preoperly taught.
A proposed change in regulations of the College of Surgeons would soon cut the ground from under the private summer schools, since diplomas taken in the summer were not to be recognised.
However, gradually Lawrence conformed more to the style of the College of Surgeons, and was elected to their Council in 1828. This somewhat wounded Wakley, who complained to Lawrence, and made some remarks in the Lancet. But, true to form, Wakley soon saw Lawrence's rise in the College as providing him with an inside track into the working of the institution he was hoping to reform. For some years Lawrence hunted with the Lancet and ran with the College. From the inside, Lawrence was able to help forward several of the much-needed reforms espoused by Wakley. The College of Surgeons was at last reformed, to some extent at least, by a new charter in 1843.17
This episode marks Lawrence's return to repectability; in fact, Lawrence succeeded Abernethy as the 'dictator' of Bart's. From then, Lawrence's career went ever forward. He never looked back: he became President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Victoria. Before he died she made him a baronet. "Never again [did] he venture to express his views on the processes of evolution, on the past or the future of man." 18 He did, however, warn the young T.H. Huxley – in vain, it must be said – not to broach the dangerous topic of the evolution of man.19
The anonymous publication of the Vestiges in 1844, and the very great caution shown by Darwin in publishing his radical ideas had a similar cause, the need to avoid a direct conflict with religion whilst giving voice to scientific ideas. We know that Darwin owned a copy of Lawrence's book, and that he did brood about the consequences of publishing his ideas.202122
In Lawrence's day the impact of laws on sedition and blasphemy were even more threatening than they were in Darwin's time.23 Darwin referred to Lawrence (1819) six times in his Descent of man (1871).24
Lawrence's Natural history of man contained some remarkable anticipations of later thought, but was ruthlessly, and successfully, suppressed. The suppression was so effective that to this day Lawrence does not seem to get the recognition he deserves. He is omitted, for example, from many of the Darwin biographies,25 and from some evolution textbooks.26
Lawrence was one of three British medical men who wrote on evolution-related topics between 1813 and 1819. They would all have been familiar with Erasmus Darwin and Lamark at least; probably also Malthus. Two (Prichard and Lawrence) dedicated their works to Blumenbach, the founder of physical anthropology. "The men who took up the challenge of Lamark were three English physicians, Wells, Lawrence and Prichard"... "All three men denied soft heredity (Lamarkism)" 27 Not too accurate in biographical terms, as Lawrence was actually a surgeon, Wells was born in Carolina to a Scottish family, and Prichard was a Scot! However, correct in principle on the main issue. Each grasped aspects of Darwin's theory, yet none saw the whole picture, and none developed the ideas any further. The later publication of Chambers' Vestiges and Matthew's Naval timber28 was more explicit; the existence of the whole group suggests there was something real (though intangible) about the intellectual atmosphere in Britain which is captured by the phrase 'evolution was in the air.'
The years 1815-1835 saw much political and social turmoil in Britain, not least in the medical profession. There were radical medical students and campaigners in both Edinburgh and London, the two main training centres for the profession at the time. Many of these were materialists who held views favouring evolution, but of a Lamarkian or Geoffroyan kind.29 It is the allegiance to hard inheritance or to natural selection which distinguishes Lawrence, Prichard and Wells, because those ideas have survived, and are part of the present-day account of evolution.
The existence of races is a token of change in the human species, and suggests there is some significance in geographical separation. Lawrence noted that racial characteristics were inherited, not caused by the direct effect of, for instance, climate. As an example, he considered the way skin colour was inherited by children of African origin when born in temperate climates: how their colour developed without exposure to the sun, and how this continued through generations. This was evidence against the direct effect of climate.
Lawrence's ideas on heredity were many years ahead of their time, as this extract shows: "The offspring inherit only [their parents'] connate peculiarities and not any of the acquired qualities". This is as clear a rejection of soft inheritance as one can find. However, Lawrence qualified it by including the origin of birth defects owing to influences on the mother (an old folk superstition). So Mayr places Wilhelm His, Sr. in 1874 as the first unqualified rejection of soft inheritance.3031 However, the number of places in the text where Lawrence explicitly rejects the direct action of the environment on heredity justifies his recognition as an early opponent of Geoffroyism.
Here, as seen by Cyril Darlington, are some of the ideas presented by Lawrence in his book, much abbreviated and rephrased in more modern terms:
Darlington's account goes further than other commentators. He seems to credit Lawrence with a modern appreciation of selection (which he definitely did not have); subsequently, Darlington's account was criticised as an over-statement.33 Darlington does not claim Lawrence actually enunciated a theory of evolution, though passages in Lawence's book do suggest that races were historically developed. On heredity and adaptation, and the rejection of Lamarkism (soft inheritance) Lawrence is quite advanced.
Lecture I: introductory to the lectures of 1817.
Reply to the charges of Mr Abernethy; Modern history and progress of comparative anatomy.
This follows the first publication of Lawrence's ideas in 1816, and Abernethy's criticism of them in his lectures for 1817.34
The early part of the 1819 book is marked by Lawrence's reaction to Abernethy's attack on the 'materialism' of the first book. After a long preamble, in which Lawrence extols the virtues of freedom of speech, he eventually gets to the point:
Lawrence is here arguing that medical questions should be answered by medical evidence, in other words, he is arguing for rational thought and empiricism instead of revelation or received religion. In particular, he insisted that mental activity was produced as a function of the brain, and has nothing to do with metaphysical concepts such as the 'soul'. Also, there is an implication, never quite stated, that Abernethy's motive might be venal; that jealousy (for example) might be revealed by "a consideration of the real motives" (phrase from his long initial footnote). It is absolutely clear that the conflict predates the publication of Lawrence's book.
The discussion drawn from stratigraphy is interesting:
Refers to Cuvier, Brongniart and Lamark in France, and Parkinson in Britain) in connection with fossils:
Chapter VII raises the issue of whether different races have similar diseases (p162 et seq) and ends with a list of reasons for placing man in one distinct species. The reasons are mostly anatomical with some behavioural, such as speech. They remain valid today.
Next there is a lengthy discussion of variation in man, and of the differences between races. Then he considers causation. Lectures of 1818, Chapter IX: On the causes of the varieties of the human species:
He shows clearly in several places that differences between races (and between varieties of domesticated animals) are inherited, and not caused by the direct action of the environment; then follows this admission:
So, after insisting on empirical (non-religious) evidence, he has clearly rejected Lamarkism but has not thought of natural selection.
Although in places Lawrence disclaims all knowledge of how the differences between races arose, elsewhere there are passages which hint at a mechanism. In Chapter IX, for example, we find:
Passages like this are interpreted by Darlington in his first two points above; there is more on variety and its origin in Chapter IV, p67-8. It is clear that Lawrence's understanding of heredity was well ahead of his time, (ahead of Darwin, in fact) and that he only lacks the idea of selection to have a fully-fledged theory of evolution.
Direct contradiction of the Bible was something Lawrence might have avoided, but his honesty and forthright approach led him onto this dangerous ground:
Passages such as these, fully in the tradition of British empiricism and the Age of Enlightenment, were no doubt pointed out to the Lord Chancellor. In his opinion, the subject was not open for discussion.
| Baronetage of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by New Creation |
Baronet (of Ealing Park) 1867 |
Succeeded by James John Trevor Lawrence |
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