Bell.] 1 i *J [March 21, 



this extreme repugnance, he became a member of the English Bar, went 

 on the Northern Circuit, and concluded his legal career by being made 

 Lord Chancellor. 



Doctor Meigs was induced to change his course by the advice of judi- 

 cious friends, who pointed out to him the advanced age of the promi- 

 nent practitioners of Midwifery and the room that would ere long be 

 left for younger aspirants. Accordingly he entered at once with his 

 characteristic ardor the untried road, and soon began to win reputation 

 for his assiduous attention and the skillful management of his patients, 

 who were warm in their praises of their new accoucheur. With a knowl- 

 edge of his great sensibility and imaginative turn of mind, one can 

 readily understand the effort it must have cost him to subject himself to 

 the trials of patience, under the wearisome details, the anxiety and re" 

 sponsibility which he continually encountered, in a still greater degree 

 than in the ordinary practice of medicine, which of itself has a heavy 

 load of cares to carry. The explanation must be found in the very quali- 

 ties of the man, which made him regardless of difficulties and obstruc- 

 tions in the excited determination to overcome them, in the lofty belief 

 that he had become a ministering spirit endowed with the almost apos- 

 tolic powers for the relief of those who placed themselves under his care, 

 and appealed to him in their trouble. 



Once engaged in his mission, he gave himself no pause nor halted on 

 the way, but steadily, cheerfully and kindly, at all hours and seasons, 

 placed himself at the command of those who sought his services. If 

 these were not always remembered with gratitude he did not complain, 

 but consoled himself with the overflowing thankfulness and warm regard 

 of those, and the number was continually increasing, who had been 

 soothed and relieved by his ministrations. 



Once fully engaged in the practice of Obstetrics he determined to make 

 himself master of its literature, and with this view he set himself to a 

 translation of Velpeau's Treatise on Midwifery, and projected an elemen- 

 tary work of his own on the same subject. Reference to a Medical Jour- 

 nal, edited at the time by the present writer, exhibits his opinion of this 

 work in the following terms : 



"The author writes in a style of blended aphorism and narrative, the 

 first succinct and modestly laid down, the second clear and untrameled 

 by extraneous matters. We feel as if we were conversing with one who 

 had read much, practised much and meditated well on the various im- 

 portant questions embraced in his favorite branch of medical science, and 

 who, whilst giving his own experience, is not desirous to dogmatize his 

 own doctrine nor needlesly disparage those of others. If here and there 

 a phrase somewhat figurative is met with, the reader will see that it does 

 not mislead him as to the meaning ; and he ought also to be informed 

 that the author, so far from aiming at false effect by this means, deserves 

 credit for his successfully keeping under wholesome restraint an active 

 imagination, if not a temperament somewhat poetical. There is just 

 evidence enough of these latter in an agreeable coloring of the style and 

 turn of thought, without false analogies or exuberant phraseology." 



