706 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 



visit to Europe had been to withdraw from unnecessary labors, not 

 on account of obvious ill health, and surely not from indolence, but 

 from prudence. In 1899 his horse fell with him, and this accident cost 

 him a broken rib and an attack of pleurisy, and marks the period sub- 

 sequent to which his strength and power of work were never quite 

 what they had been before. In 1901 he writes to Mr. Gannett : " I am 



sorry that I do not write to oftener and to you and to and 



that I do not do a lot of extra things in the way of work of all kinds 

 and of social duties and pleasures. But I discovered some time ago 

 that there was not enough of me to go around. Starting in debt and 

 having something to do for others all the time, one has to be economi- 

 cal of his strength if he is going to practise medicine." 



Many men would have met this need of economy of strength by 

 longer and more frequent holidays than he took. But, fond as he 

 was of the country, of travel, of new friends, his habit of long years 

 had been to husband his strength by careful living, and not to separate 

 himself far or for long from his patients and his desk. Perhaps he 

 knew himself better than his advisers knew him when he chose this 

 mode of life, or accepted it as a satisfactory one when it seemed forced 

 upon him by his duties. His recreation lay in friendly intercourse, in 

 horseback riding, and, of late years, in absences of short duration at 

 Little Boar's Head, New Hampshire, where he and his wife, with 

 several friends, spent a number of consecutive summers. The final 

 visit to Europe, which at best was to have been of but two months 

 duration, was looked forward to by both his wife and himself with the 

 greater pleasure for the fact that it had been so long postponed. He 

 was pretty well tired before starting, but in essential ways had seemed 

 as well and as serene as common. Perhaps, in fact, he felt less well 

 than he admitted. At any rate, even on the passage outward he 

 seemed poorly, and when in England a constant though slight fever 

 set in and he was unable to obtain the expected pleasure from the 

 visits and excursions that he made. While in London he consulted 

 physicians, among them Sir Lauder Brunton and Sir Almroth Wright, 

 but without avail. During the voyage homeward his fever increased 

 to a high point and he became delirious. On arriving in New York 

 he was taken to the Roosevelt Hospital and carefully tended by Dr. 

 Walter B. James. Here he lay for several weeks, at times improving 

 slightly, at times worse again, but on the whole gradually losing 

 ground. Much of the time his mind wandered a little, but it was 

 striking to note how fully he retained his characteristic patience and 

 his unmurmuring readiness to accept results, whatever they might be. 

 Perhaps he felt sure from the first that he should not get well, and 



