EDINBURGH. 



33 



Oil- chemistry by Hope ; but to my mind there are no advan- 

 tages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with read- 

 ing. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at 8 o'clock 

 on a winter's morning are something fearful to remember. 



Dr. made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he 



was himself, and the subject disgusted me. It has proved 

 one of the greatest evils in my life that I was not urged to 

 practise dissection, for I should soon have got over my dis- 

 gust ; and the practice would have been invaluable for all my 

 future work. This has been an irremediable evil, as well as 

 my incapacity to draw. I also attended regularly the clinical 

 wards in the hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a 

 good deal, and I still have vivid pictures before me of some 

 of them ; but I was not so foolish as to allow this to lessen 

 my attendance. I cannot understand why this part of my 

 medical course did not interest me in a greater degree ; for 

 during the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began at- 

 tending some of the poor people, chiefly children and women 

 in Shrewsbury : I wrote down as full an account as I could 

 of the case with all the symptoms, and read them aloud to 

 my father, who suggested further inquiries and advised me 

 what medicines to give, which I made up myself. At one 

 time I had at least a d-^zen patients, and I felt a keen interest 

 in the work. My father, who was by far the best judge of 

 character whom I ever knew, declared that I should make a 

 successful physician, — meaning by this one who would get 

 many patients. He maintained that the chief element of suc- 

 vcess was exciting confidence ; but what he saw in me which 

 convinced him that I should create confidence I know not. 

 I also attended on two occasions the operating theatre in the 

 hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very bad operations, one 

 on a child, but I rushed away before they were completed. 

 Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly any inducement 

 would have been strong enough to make me do so; this being 

 long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two cases 

 fairly haunted me for many a long year. 



My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that 



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