178 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VIII. 



or more hours weekly, sometimes with pulse at 150, it was 

 frequently with torturing setons and open blister wounds ; 

 and every holiday was eagerly seized for the application 

 of similar " heroic remedies," or " bosom friends," as he 

 named them. His keen appreciation of the pleasures of 

 society, and of all beautiful things, was sternly put aside to 

 meet professional claims ; and all with such quiet simplicity 

 or gay good humour, that few if any guessed the price at 

 which his work was accomplished. 



" I should have been to see you," a note at this time 

 says, "but a cold has damaged my bellows a little, and I 

 have had to put a comforter on the chest in which they are 

 kept." And before the opening of a winter session, he 

 writes to a fellow invalid, " I'll wager you'll get through the 

 winter with less croaking than I will. I was wondering this 

 morning, as I looked at my collar-bones, how soon they 

 would have a blister occupying the valley below. You 

 have not, like me, to turn * stump orator ' for six months 

 in the year ; and talk, talk, talk till your tongue cleaves to 

 the roof of your mouth ; however, I hope we'll both fare 

 well. To be well enough to work is sufficient, and quite 

 satisfies me." " One whole day in seven spent in talking 

 out loud," he says again, " makes that prophecy com- 

 forting, ' Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.' " 



Besides the systematic course of lectures, given each 

 session to his several classes, there were occasional series 

 of popular lectures. The greater number of these were 

 delivered before the Philosophical Institution, 1 Edinburgh, 

 with increasing acceptance on each occasion. The subject 

 of the first course was, "The Chemistry of the Gases," 

 and part of the Introductory Lecture appeared shortly 



1 The title, in its earlier years, was " Philosophical Association," and 

 the lectures were delivered in the Waterloo Rooms. 



