7- IMPRESSIONS OF HOSPITAL LIFE. 15 



propped up in bed, and intently occupied with a blacking- 

 brush, borrowed from the nurse, polishing the single shoe 

 which in six weeks, or a month at soonest, he might hope 

 to wear. I could not help smiling in his face, and wishing 

 him a speedy return to his shoe, which at once became the 

 text of a cheerful conversation. The ludicrous inappro- 

 priateness, as it then seemed to me, of the patient's occu- 

 pation relieved my feelings ; and its perfect appropriateness, 

 as it seemed to himself, relieved his ; for, as I learned more 

 fully in subsequent conversations, his great concern was to 

 count the hours till he should reach a fishing village in the 

 South of England, where his mother and sister longed for 

 his return. He made an excellent recovery, and reached 

 his home in safety. After this experience I became a 

 constant visitor on my own account to all the wards, and 

 in the course of four years made many a strange acquaint- 

 ance. I refer here to the circumstance, that it may become 

 the ground of recommendation to the young student, who 

 is distressed by the spectacle of suffering, to interest him- 

 self in the welfare of the sufferers. A feeling which may 

 otherwise readily grow morbid is turned into a wholesome 

 and profitable moral exercise. The text sculptured on the 

 front of the Edinburgh Infirmary, 'I was sick, and ye 

 visited me,' has a blessing in it for the visitors as well as 

 the visited, as our Saviour emphatically teaches, and as 

 all who have obeyed its implicit command have realized." 1 

 This Wilson, the sailor, became the object of many kind 

 -attentions from his young namesake. For some time sailor- 

 friends visited him, bringing tobacco wherewith to while 

 away the weary hours. When they left for another port, 



1 " On the Character of God, as inferred from the Study of Human 

 Anatomy." Addresses to Medical Students, by request of the Medical 

 Missionary Society in 1855-56, pp. 43-49. A. andC. Black, Edinburgh. 



