l6 THE DARWIN FAMILY. 



come, Doctor, this won't do — though it is very kind of you to 

 say so for my sake — for I know that you take a very large 

 glass of hot gin and water every evening after your dinner.'* 

 So my father asked him how he knew this. The man an- 

 swered, ' My cook was your kitchen-maid for two or three 

 years, and she saw the butler every day prepare and take to 

 you the gin and water.' The explanation was that my father 

 had the odd habit of drinking hot water in a very tall and 

 large glass after his dinner ; and the butler used first to put 

 some cold water in the glass, which the girl mistook for gin, 

 and then filled it up with boiling water from the kitchen 

 boiler, 



*^ My father used to tell me many little things which he 

 had found useful in his medical practice. Thus ladies often 

 cried much while telling him their troubles, and thus caused 

 much loss of his precious time. He soon found that begging 

 them to command and restrain themselves, always made them 

 weep the more, so that afterwards he always encouraged them 

 to go on crying, saying that this would relieve them more than 

 anything else, and with the invariable result that they soon 

 ceased to cry, and he could hear what they had to say and 

 give his advice. When patients who were very ill craved for 

 some strange and unnatural food, my father asked them what 

 had put such an idea into their heads ; if they answered that 

 they did not know, he would allow them to try the food, and 

 often with success, as he trusted to their having a kind of 

 instinctive desire ; but if they answered that they had heard 

 that the food in question had done good to some one else, 

 he firmly refused his assent. 



*' He gave one day an odd little specimen of human na- 

 ture. When a very young man he was called in to consult 

 with the family physician in the case of a gentleman of much 

 distinction in Shropshire. The old doctor told the wife 

 that the illness was of such a nature that it must end fatally. 



* This belief still survives, and was mentioned to my brother in 1884 

 by an old inhabitant of Shrewsbury. — F. D. 



