Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/254

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Paget
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Paget

the beginning of a new era of national life. It is admitted that in this trying period his tact was conspicuous. He remained in Italy for a long time, becoming ambassador extraordinary on 24 March 1876. On 12 Sept. 1883 he relinquished this post and, after a short period of leave, became ambassador at Vienna on 1 Jan. 1884. From that post he retired on 1 July 1893. He devoted much of the leisure which now came to him to the preparation of his father's memoirs. These he published in 1895 under the title of 'The Paget Papers.')

He died at Hatfield suddenly, at the close of a short visit to the Marquis of Salisbury, on 11 July 1896. He is buried at Tardebigg, Bromsgrove, near the seat of his son-in-law, Lord Windsor.

Paget's upright and manly character was much valued by the sovereigns with whom he had to deal; his influence was rather that of the English gentleman than of the astute diplomatist. He was created C.B. on 10 Feb. and K.C.B. on 16 March 1863, a privy councillor in 1876, and G.C.B. in 1883.

Paget married, on 20 Oct. 1860, the Countess Walpurga Ehrengarde Helena de Hohenthal, maid of honour to the princess royal of Prussia, and left three children one son in the army, another in the diplomatic service; his daughter married the present Lord Windsor.

[Foreign Office List, 1895; Annual Register, 1896; Times, 13 July and 17 July 1896.]

PAGET, Sir JAMES (1814–1899), surgeon, born at Great Yarmouth on 11 Jan. 1814, was the eighth of the seventeen children of Samuel Paget and Sarah Elizabeth, his wife, daughter of Thomas Tolver of Chester. Sir George Paget [q. v.] was an elder brother. The father was a brewer and shipowner, who served the office of mayor of Great Yarmouth in 1817. James was educated at Yarmouth at a private school, and was apprenticed in 1830 to Charles Costerton, a St. Bartholomew's man, in practice as a surgeon at Yarmouth. He found time during his apprenticeship to write and publish jointly with one of his brothers a book on the natural history of Great Yarmouth. Paget came to London in the autumn of 1834 to enter as a student at St. Bartholomew's hospital, and in February 1835, while he was working in the dissecting-room, he called the attention of his teachers to some little white specks in the muscles of one of the subjects. He borrowed a microscope, showed that the specks were cysts containing worms, and read a paper on the subject before the Abernethian Societv on 6 Feb. 1835. His observations were afterwards confirmed by Professor (Sir) Richard Owen [q. v.], and the parasite has been well known ever since under the name Trichina spiralis. In 1835-1836 Paget filled the post of clinical clerk under Dr. Peter Mere Latham (1789-1875) [q. v.], because he was unable to afford the fee demanded by the surgeons of the hospital for the office of dresser. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 13 May 1836, and, after a short visit to Paris, he settled in London, and supported himself by teaching and writing. He was sub-editor of the 'Medical Gazette' from 1837 to 1842, and in 1841 he was elected surgeon to the Finsbury dispensary. At St. Bartholomew's Hospital Paget was appointed curator of the museum in succession to W. J. Bayntin in 1837, and in 1839 he was chosen demonstrator of morbid anatomy, in which position he proved himself so good a teacher that on 30 May 1843 he was promoted to be lecturer on general anatomy and physiology. On 10 Aug. 1843 he was elected warden of the college for students, then first established at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a post he resigned in October 1851. In 1846 he drew up a catalogue of the anatomical museum of the hospital, and on 24 Feb. 1847 he was chosen an assistant surgeon after a severe contest, the opposition being based upon the ground that he had never served the office of dresser or house-surgeon, posts which had been considered hitherto essential qualifications in every candidate for the surgical staff. He lectured on physiology in the medical school from 1859 to 1861, was promoted full surgeon in July 1861, held the lectureship on surgery from 1865 to 1869, resigned the office of surgeon in May 1871, and was immediately appointed a consulting surgeon to the hospital.

At the Royal College of Surgeons of England Paget was admitted one of the first fellows, when that order was established in 1843, and he prepared the descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the Hunterian Museum, which appeared at intervals between 1846 and 1849. He was Arris and Gale professor of anatomy and surgery from 1847 to 1852, a member of the council from 1865 to 1889, a vice-president in 1873 and 1874, chairman of the midwifery board in 1874, president in 1875, representative of the college at the General Medical Council from 1876to 1881, Hunterian orator in 1877, the first Bradshaw lecturer 'on some new and rare diseases' in 1882, and the first Morton lecturer on cancer and cancerous diseases in 1887.

As early as 1858, and while he was still