26 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



earliest discoveries related to the liver, and I was 

 familiar with a drawing in colours that he had made 

 in illustration, which was preserved with great respect 

 at the Birmingham Hospital. In later years he told 

 me that having no further use for his collection of 

 drawings, he gave them to Dr. B. In time Dr. B. 

 died, and Bowman then became desirous to get back 

 his old drawings as mementoes of early work, but 

 could hear nothing of them. By an extraordinary 

 chance he was looking one day at prints in a second- 

 hand and second-rate book-shop, when his eye caught 

 sight of a corner of these very drawings. They were 

 all there, and he bought them all back. He could 

 not learn their intermediate history. 



It was in the autumn of 1838 that I took up my 

 abode, as indoor pupil, in the Birmingham General 

 Hospital, then situated near Snow Hill. My im- 

 mediate chief was the house surgeon, Mr. Baker, 

 who ultimately gained considerable repute as a 

 surgeon in Birmingham, but is now dead. My one 

 fellow indoor pupil had a similarly successful career 

 to that of Mr. Baker. There were also in the 

 common dining-room two officials, the matron and 

 the treasurer. Matters were very different then ; 

 I, a mere boy of sixteen, but with unquestionably 

 an eager mind, was thrust without any previous ex- 

 perience into a post that I found in a few months' 

 time to be one of much responsibility. At first I 

 was set to work every morning to help in the 

 dispensary. It was a room with a dresser and a 

 service door at the side. I there learnt the difference 

 between infusions, decoctions, tinctures, and ex- 

 tracts, and how to make them. Possibly the reader 



