and share a house with at 14 Finsbury Circus, London for three years. In 1855, the position of chair of medicine at the University of Edinburgh became open. The position was highly desired and candidates would canvas for the spot. Of eight potential contestants, Laycock was selected by the Edinburgh Town Council; however, he was not generally accepted by the public or by the people of the profession. Despite the antagonism, Laycock maintained his reputation as a prolific writer in medical, philosophical, and psychological writings up until his death in 1876. Laycock set up a course for medical psychology and mental diseases as a professor of medicine at Edinburgh. His course was not well received by the medical students at Edinburgh. The medical students preferred being taught straightforward principles to help prepare for examinations. On the other hand, Laycock preferred to present an abstract, broad view of medicine in the hopes that his students would learn through independent reading without someone forcing them to learn. In Edinburgh, Laycock was friendly with the asylum reformer William A.F. Browne (1805-1885) and was a major influence on his son, the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938) During his mid-forties, Laycock suffered from phthisis (tuberculosis). His physicians told him that he did not have long to live, however, he went on to live for another twenty years. Due to tuberculosis of the knee, his left knee had to be amputated. He insisted on having the operation done without anesthetics, and he spent the last decade of his life as an amputee. His wife Ann died in 1869 and is buried in York. Laycock died at home, 13 Walker Street, in Edinburgh's West End. He is buried a short distance from his home, in one of the upper terraces of St Johns Episcopal Church at the west end of Princes Street. Teachings Reflex function of the brain Following the work of Robert Whytt and Marshall Hall, Laycock studied the reflex arc in relation to the nervous system. While Hall believed that the reflex arc was mediated by the spinal cord, separate from the cerebrum, Laycock argued that the brain underwent the same reflex patterns as the rest of the nervous system. After learning the German language, he translated books by Johann August Unzer, who studied afferent and efferent reflexes. Unzer centralised the nervous system in the spinal cord, such that reflexes could occur even without a functional