MEDICAL STUDIES 45 



the right side. Still more recently, the idea of con- 

 sumption being communicated by any form of infection 

 was stoutly denied by English medical men. As to 

 rules of diet, the changes are ludicrous. Robert 

 Frere, one of my fellow-pupils when with Professor 

 Partridge, became through marriage in later years 

 a managing partner in a very old and eminent firm 

 of wine merchants. They had supplied George iv. 

 with his brandy and the like. He told me that the 

 books of the firm showed that every class of wine 

 had in its turn been favoured by the doctors. 



There were many incidents that I could tell about 

 this time of my life that might be interesting in some 

 sense, but which are foreign to the main purpose 

 of such an autobiography as mine, which is to in- 

 dicate how the growth of a mind has been affected 

 by circumstances. I will, however, make one ex- 

 ception, which refers to a very narrow escape from 

 drowning. I had been in a steamboat, crammed 

 with people, to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat- 

 race, and was returning with stream and tide. The 

 arches of Old Battersea Bridge were narrow, and it 

 required careful steering on such occasions to get 

 safely through them. The steamboat on which I 

 was yawed greatly. I was standing behind the right- 

 hand paddle-box, when it crashed against one of the 

 piers and split open just in front of me, giving a 

 momentary view of the still revolving paddles. The 

 shock sent me down among them. I was con- 

 scious of two taps on the back of my head, and then 

 the water swirled over me. In a few seconds my 

 wits had gathered themselves together, and I found 

 myself submerged under a mass of wood, which 



