24 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



back door as directed, and treading softly up the back 

 staircase to the cold garret where the poor girl lay. 

 She was the first dead person I had seen, handsome 

 in feature, but greatly swollen. She had been 

 apparently in perfect health a few hours before, then 

 she was suddenly seized with intense pain in the 

 stomach, followed rapidly by peritonitis and death. 

 I can easily reproduce in imagination all the ghastly 

 horror of the scene and could describe it in detail, but 

 it would be unfitted for these pages. The perforated 

 portion of the stomach was such a small hole. Death 

 "with a little pin, bores through the castle wall, and 

 farewell, King!" {King Richard II .). Mr. P. pricked 

 his finger while sewing up the abdomen. A dissection 

 wound when death has followed peritonitis is pro- 

 verbially dangerous. It was so in this case, for 

 Mr. P. nearly died of it. I returned home chilled, 

 awed and sobered, and seemed for the time to have 

 left boyhood behind me. 



My father, ever thoughtful of securing for me the 

 best education he could, had arranged through Mr. 

 Hodgson that one of his most promising former 

 pupils, who was going for a tour of a few weeks 

 abroad, partly for vacation, partly to see certain 

 medical institutions, should take me with him. He 

 was William Bowman, in later years the great oculist, 

 Sir William (18 16-1892), who combined a most 

 refined and artistic temperament with exceptional 

 scientific ability. He obtained a European reputation 

 for medical research long before he was thirty years 

 of age. Thenceforward for many years he devoted 

 himself almost entirely to professional work, and 

 though keeping abreast of the information of the day, 



