tomy at the university of Glasgow, under Allen Thomson, and also pathologist to the royal infirmary, which posts he held up to 1855. In that year he was sent out to the Crimea under Dr, Robert S. D. Lyons [q. v.] as assistant pathologist to the commission appointed to investigate the diseases from which our troops were suffering (Parl. Papers, 1856). In 1860 he was selected for the post of professor of pathology in the newly constituted army medical school at Fort Pitt, Chatham, which was afterwards removed to Isetley. This appointment he held until April 1892, when failing health necessitated his retirement, and he died the same year on 25 June. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1873, and was knighted at the jubilee in 1887. In the following year he received the honorary degrees of LL.D. from the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He married in 1884 Emily Clara, daughter of Henry Allen, esq., who survived him. His portrait by Symonds is at Netley Hospital.
His works include a well-known 'Handbook of the Science and Practice of Medicine,' 1857, 7th edit. 1880; 'An Essay on the Growth of the Recruit and Young Soldier,' 2nd edit. 1887; and an unfinished 'Catalogue of the Pathological Museum at Netley Hospital.'
[Men and Women of the Time, 13th edit., 1891; obituary notice in the Lancet; information from J. D. Malcolm, esq., F.E.C.S. Edin.]
ALBAN, St. (d. 304?), called 'the protomartyr of Britain,' and by many mediaeval writers, by a strange confusion, 'the protomartyr of the English,' was according to Bede a pagan when, during the persecution in the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian, he gave shelter to a christian cleric and was converted by him. After some days the 'prince,' hearing that the cleric was with Alban, sent to arrest him. On the approach of the soldiers Alban put on his teacher's cloak or cowl, and gave himself up in his stead. "When taken before the judge, who asked him how he dared shelter a 'sacrilegious rebel,' he declared himself a christian, and refused to sacrifice to the heathen deities. He was scourged and led forth to be beheaded outside the city of Verulamium. A great multitude accompanied him, and thronged the bridge across the river (the Ver), whose waters divided so that he crossed dryshod. On this the executioner threw down his sword, declaring that he would rather die with him than put him to death. Alban was led to the top of a flower-clad hill (the site of the future abbey), where a spring of water rose miraculously to quench his thirst. One was found to act as executioner, and Alban was beheaded. The soldier who had refused to execute him was also beheaded, and the eyes of him who had taken the executioner's place dropped out. Alban suffered on 22 June. "When the persecution ceased a church was built on the place of his martyrdom, and there down to Bede's day (731) it was believed that frequent miracles were wrought. Bede, copying from Gild as, adds that at the same time Aaron and Julius were martyred at 'Legionum urbs,' or Caerleon, and many more of both sexes in various places.
Doubt has been cast on this narrative, because the Diocletian persecution did not extend to Britain ({(sc|Eusebius}}, Historia Ecclesiastica, viii. 13, and other authorities quoted in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, i. 7). Aaron and Julius are certainly rather shadowy persons, and the statements of Gildas and later writers as to numerous martyrdoms, which imply a widespread persecution in Britain, are untrustworthy. Yet there is not sufficient reason for rejecting the individual case of Alban, who may have suffered at some other time, and in a merely local persecution. In any case his martyrdom rests on fair historical ground, since it was believed at Verulamium a century and a quarter after the date generally assigned to it. For Constantius, in his 'Life of Germanus' [q. v.], bishop of Auxerre, written about forty years after the bishop's death, records that in 429 Germanus and Lupus visited the tomb of Alban, and that Germanus took away some earth which was believed to be reddened by the martyr's blood. Germanus built a church at Auxerre in honour of St. Alban, which was standing in the eleventh century (Recueil des Historiens, X. 172). In the sixth century the martyrdom was recorded by Gildas, and noticed in a poem written 569-74 by Venantius Fortunatus, afterwards bishop of Poitiers, in a line quoted by Bede, whose account of Alban was probably taken from some source not now known to exist. The foundation of the abbey of St. Alban is attributed to Offa (d. 796) [q. v.], who was believed to have discovered the martyr's body.
It was believed at St. Albans that Alban's body was carried off by the Danes, and restored through the agency of the sacristan Egwin, who went to Denmark and secretly abstracted it. In the twelfth century the convent of Ely claimed that they had the body, but an inquisition into the matter having been made by order of Hadrian IV, they definitely renounced their pretensions. It is said that while some excavations were
