The same zeal made him always ready to listen to any new suggestion which promised to be useful, at a period of life when many men find it hard to learn new methods and accept new doctrines.  Few of his generation became so accomplished as he in the arts of direct exploration; coming straight from the Parisian experts, I have examined many patients with him, and have had frequent opportunities of observing his skill in percussion and auscultation.

One element in his success, a trivial one compared with others, but not to be despised, was his punctuality.  He always carried two watches,—­I doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the orange-peel,—­but probably with reference to this virtue.  He was as much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox.  There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if he had made his visit for several days successively at ten o’clock, for instance, not to put it off, if he could possibly help it, until eleven, and so keep a nervous patient and an anxious family waiting for him through a long, weary hour.

If I should attempt to characterize his teaching, I should say that while it conveyed the best results of his sagacious and extended observation, it was singularly modest, cautious, simple, sincere.  Nothing was for show, for self-love; there was no rhetoric, no declamation, no triumphant “I told you so,” but the plain statement of a clear-headed honest man, who knows that he is handling one of the gravest subjects that interest humanity.  His positive instructions were full of value, but the spirit in which he taught inspired that loyal love of truth which lies at the bottom of all real excellence.

I will not say that, during his long career, Dr. Jackson never made an enemy.  I have heard him tell how, in his very early days, old Dr. Danforth got into a towering passion with him about some professional consultation, and exploded a monosyllable or two of the more energetic kind on the occasion.  I remember that that somewhat peculiar personage, Dr. Waterhouse, took it hardly when Dr. Jackson succeeded to his place as Professor of Theory and Practice.  A young man of Dr. Jackson’s talent and energy could hardly take the position that belonged to him without crowding somebody in a profession where three in a bed is the common rule of the household.  But he was a peaceful man and a peace-maker all his days.  No man ever did more, if so much, to produce and maintain the spirit of harmony for which we consider our medical community as somewhat exceptionally distinguished.