78 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IV. 



it every attention; this I shall do. Failing this, I shall 

 lecture somewhere else, write papers, teach chemistry even 

 in a boarding-school ; anything, so as I am kept among the 

 retorts and crucibles. Whatever happens I shall not regret 

 London and its advantages" 



In June of this year, 1839, George passed the remaining 

 examination necessary for the degree of M.D. His doing 

 so was, of course, an occasion of much joy and many con- 

 gratulations. In the letters which follow, he announces his 

 good fortune, with particulars, to members of the family 

 absent from home. 



" MY DEAR DANIEL, I shall never more, rightly or 

 wrongly, divide with you the title of Mr., for I am now a 

 physician (three cheers and a hurrah !) having passed the 

 dreaded inquisition yesterday, so that I am not twenty-four 

 hours old at the time I write you. I did not intend or 

 expect to go up to Physicians' Hall for two weeks yet, 

 and had made almost no preparation, having been writing 

 my Thesis, and writing letters and making out abstracts for 

 Samuel Brown, and procrastinating in the expectation of 

 getting John Niven's assistance. Now I can offer assist- 

 ance to him, and help him in his difficulties. It was a 

 much more simple thing than I expected, and it had need 

 to have been, for I only studied a week for it, but that was 

 a very hard week's work. I began Thursday before last in 

 the afternoon, and worked on that day and every succeeding 

 one up to yesterday, thirteen hours a day, beginning at nine 

 o'clock, and getting to bed at one o'clock A.M. I contrived 

 to go twice through a huge octavo of 600 pages, of < Practice 

 of Physic,' another of 700, besides smaller books innume- 

 rable. On the Sunday, I went through the morning service 



