He had studied in Paris under
sound teachers, and after some years of private practice won the
appointment which he held, as active and emeritus professor, for
forty-seven years. He was a faithful, clear, and amusing
lecturer, and printed two or three notable medical essays, but
his chief Boston reputation, in the eighteen-fifties, was that of
a wit and diner-out and writer of verses for occasions. Then came
his great hour of good luck in 1857, when Lowell, the editor of
the newly-established "Atlantic Monthly," persuaded him to write
"The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." It was the public's luck
also, for whoever had been so unfortunate as not to be born in
Boston could now listen--as if across the table--to Boston's best
talker. Few volumes of essays during the last sixty years have
given more pleasure to a greater variety of readers than is
yielded by "The Autocrat." It gave the Doctor a reputation in
England which he naturally prized, and which contributed to his
triumphal English progress, many years later, recorded pleasantly
in "Our Hundred Days.
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