the Davies case in 1829. The doctors who had declared Davies insane were proved by the event to be quite right. Encouraged by this success, in 1831, Combe published his Observations on Mental Derangement, which was very successful. Ill health forced Combe to spend the winter of 1831–2 abroad, but he recovered sufficiently to begin writing his work on Physiology applied to Health and Education. This was published in 1834 and was a bestseller. In the early 1830s Combe's address is listed as 25 Northumberland Street in the fashionable New Town of Edinburgh. His brother George Combe is listed as living at the same address. The house was purchased from John Gibson Lockhart (Sir Walter Scott's biographer and son-in-law) in 1825. In 1834, Combe applied for the post of superintendent of the Montrose asylum – the first publicly funded post in mental hospital practice in Scotland – but, on receiving a request for a reference from William A. F. Browne – Combe withdrew his application and warmly endorsed his former student. Browne was successful in his application, and was celebrated at Montrose as an outstanding superintendent. However, in his influential lectures on asylum management, delivered in the Autumn of 1836, Browne did not mention phrenological thinking, and Combe had to await a delayed expression of gratitude in the dedication of Browne's lectures – What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be – which were published to international acclaim in 1837. Combe's health permitted him to resume practice to only a limited extent in 1833-5. Early in 1836 he received the appointment of physician to King Leopold I of Belgium (with Dr James Clark's recommendation) and moved to Brussels; but his health again failed, and he returned to Edinburgh in the same year. He soon completed and published his Physiology of Digestion (1836), which reached a ninth edition in 1849. A considerable practice now absorbed his energies, and in 1838 he was appointed a physician to Queen Victoria. In 1840, he published his last, and he considered his best book, The Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy. The sixth edition appeared in 1847. During his later years, tuberculosis made serious advances. Two winters in Madeira and a voyage to the United States failed to improve things, and he died while on a visit to a nephew at Gorgie Mills, on the south-west side of Edinburgh, on 9 August 1847. Combe never