Genre:

Short Fiction, Satire, Serial

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Education, Lecturing, Chemistry, Dissection, Comparative Anatomy

Institutions mentioned:

Adelaide Gallery , Society of Apothecaries—Apothecaries' Hall

    Notes that Muff enjoyed far larger audiences than fellow professors. Describes the pranks of Jack Randall, a student of Muff's, whose activities included proposing to set Samuel Cooper's Surgical Dictionary to music, and stealing a dead monkey to make a skeleton for the Museum of Comparative Anatomy. In a lecture to his students, Muff considers 'lessons in practical chemistry' valuable, if only because they enable one to observe such phenomena as the 'evaporation of nothing from watch-glasses on hot sand'. Instructs his audience on how, after passing their examinations, they should puff themselves to 'insure a good practice'. Concludes by advising them to 'never get off your beer'. (176)