Baillie, the late well known and amiable authoress of "Plays on the Passions." After receiving the rudiments of his education under his father's immediate superintendence, he began his academical course in 1773, in the University of Glasgow, where he distinguished himself so highly as to be transferred, in 1778, upon Snell's foundation, to Baliol College, Oxford. Here, when he had attained the proper standing, he took his degrees in arts and physic. In 1780, while still keeping his terms at Oxford, he commenced his anatomical studies at London, under the care of his uncles. He had the great advantage of residing with Dr William Hunter, and, when he became sufficiently advanced in his studies, of being employed to make the necessary preparations for the lectures, to conduct the demonstrations, and to superintend the operations of the students. On the death of Dr Hunter, March 1783, he was found qualified to become the successor of that great man, in conjunction with Mr Cruickshank, who had previously been employed as Dr Hunter's assistant. His uncle appointed him by will to have the use of his splendid collection of anatomical preparations, so long as he should continue an anatomical lecturer, after which it was to be transferred to Glasgow College. Dr Baillie began to lecture in 1784, and soon acquired the highest reputation as an anatomical teacher. He was himself indefatigable in the business of forming preparations, adding, it is said, no fewer than eleven hundred articles to his uncle's museum. He possessed the valuable talent of making an abstruse and difficult subject plain; his prelections were remarkable for that lucid order and clearness of expression which proceed from a perfect conception of the subject; and he never permitted any vanity of display to turn him from his great object of conveying information in the simplest and most intelligible way, and so as to become useful to his pupils. The distinctness of his elocution was also much admired, notwithstanding that he never could altogether shake off the accent of his native country. In 1795, Dr Baillie embodied the knowledge he possessed through his own observations and those of his uncle, in a small but most valuable work, entitled, "The Morbid Anatomy of some of the most important parts of the Human Body," which was immediately translated into French and German, and extended his name to every land where medical science was cultivated. The publication of this little treatise was, indeed, an era in the history of medical knowledge in this country. It combined all the information formerly scattered through the writings of Bonetus, Lieutaud, and Montagni, besides the immense store of observations made by the ingenious author. The knowledge of the changes produced on the human frame by disease had previously been very imperfect; but it was now so completely elucidated that, with the assistance of this little volume, any person previously acquainted with morbid symptoms, but unacquainted with the disease, could, upon an examination after death, understand the whole malady. Perhaps no production of the period, ever had so much influence on the study of medicine, or contributed so much to correct unfounded speculations upon the nature of disease, to excite a spirit of observation, and to lead the attention of the student to fact and experience. Along with all its excellencies, it was delightful to observe the extreme modesty and total absence of pretension, with which the author, in the fulness of his immense knowledge, ushered it into the world.
In 1787, Dr Baillie had been elected physician to St George's Hospital, a situation which afforded him many of those opportunities of observation upon which the success of his work on Morbid Anatomy was founded. In 1789, having taken his degree of M.D. at Oxford, he was admitted a candidate at the College of Physicians, and in the following year had the full privileges of fellowship conferred upon him. About the same time, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to which he had contributed two essays. He served the
