VALENTINE MOTT.
VALENTINE MOTT was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three. Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of twenty-one he graduated with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at Columbia College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's hospitals, where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper. He chose Sir Astley Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils; and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From Edinburgh he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of that city.
He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was