tice of Scarpa, whose friendship and correspondence lie had ever afterwards the honour of retaining; and also clinical medicine under Joseph Frank, and natural history under Spallanzani. He then made the tour of Italy as far as Naples,
remained some time at Rome, .and returned hy Padua, Venice, and Trieste, to Vienna, where he attended the clinical lectures of John Peter Frank, then at the head of the profession in Germany. From Vienna he returned home, through Prague, Leipsic, Halle, Dresden, and Berlin, remaining in each long enough to see the public institutions and become acquainted with the most celebrated men. During this tour, not only did he acquire a more accurate and more extensive knowledge concerning the medical institutions and the state of medical science abroad than was at that time possessed by other medical men in this country; but he attained a proficiency in foreign languages, and an erudition in literature, which added all the accomplishments of a scholar to his qualifications as a physician. Here, too, in leisure hours snatched from severer studies, he cultivated his taste for the fine arts, more especially for painting and music, in which he ever afterwards found a charm to relieve him from the fatigues he had to encounter in the laborious and anxious discharge of his professional and professorial duties.
On his return to Edinburgh, he assisted his father in editing the Medical Commentaries, which, as we have already stated, extended to twenty volumes, and was succeeded by the Annals of Medicine, on the title page of which the name of Dr Duncan junior, first appeared along with that of his father as joint editors. But at the request of lord Selkirk he was again induced to leave his native city to visit the continent, for the purpose of attending his lordship's son, who was suffering under ill health. On his arrival, however, he found that this young nobleman had expired; but the attainments of Dr Duncan having attracted considerable notice on the continent, and being already signalized by a portion of the fame he afterwards enjoyed, he was solicited to prolong his stay in Italy, where he was by many invalids professionally consulted, and again enjoyed the opportunity of prosecuting his favourite pursuits. No man, perhaps, was ever more thoroughly imbued with the love of knowledge. It was in him an innate desire, urging him on with increasing restlessness to constant mental activity. He now remained chiefly in Florence and Pisa nine months, where he lived on habits of intimacy with the celebrated Fontana and Fabroni; after which, having visited many places in Switzerland and Germany, which he had not passed through during his former tour, he again returned to Edinburgh. He there settled as a medical practitioner, and was elected a fellow of the royal college of physicians, and shortly afterwards one of the physicians of the royal public dispensary, founded by the exertions of his father, in 1773.
While actively engaged in the practical department of his profession, he did not neglect the application of his erudition and talents to the diffusion and advancement of medical science among his professional brethren. In 1805, he undertook the chief editorship of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which has for twenty-seven years sustained the high reputation of being one of the most valuable and influential medical journals in Europe. He acted from the commencement as the chief editor, although for some time he was assisted by Dr Kellie of Leith, Dr Balteman of London, Dr Reeve of Norwich, and afterwards by Dr Cralgie. But his chief and most valuable contribution to medical science was the Edinburgh Dispensatory, the first edition of which appeared in 1803. A similar work had been published by Dr Leeds in London, in 1753, under the title of the New Dispensatory, but the advancement of chemistry and pharmacy since that period, had rendered a complete revision of it absolutely necessary. This task, which required no ordinary extent and variety of know*
