_ 
xviii AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
when he had told him that I was an English gentle- 
man, travelling in quest of natural history, he're- 
marked that he had been mistaken in his surmise, 
for that he‘had taken me for a damned Yankee. 
In the autumn of: 1814, as I was shooting 
with my excellent brother-in-law, Mr. Carr; I had 
a proof that, although a man may escape with 
impunity in distant regions, he may stumble on 
misfortune at home, when he least expects it. 
My gun went off accidentally. I had just ram- 
med the paper down upon the powder, when the 
ramrod, which was armed with brass at both ends, 
passed quite through my fore finger, betwixt 
the knuckle and the first: joint, without breaking 
the bone ; the paper and ignited powder following 
through the hole, and rendering its appearance as 
black as soot. I repaired to a tenant’s house, and 
poured warm water plentifully through the wound, 
until I had washed away the marks of the gunpow- 
der; then collecting the ruptured tendons, which 
were hanging down, I replaced them carefully, and 
bound up the wound, not forgetting to give to the 
finger its original shape as nearly as possible. -After 
this, I opened a vein with the other hand, and took 
away to the extent of two and twenty ounces of 
blood. Whilst I am on phlebotomy, I may remark, 
that I consider inflammation to be the root and 
origin of almost all diseases. To subdue this at its 
earliest stage has been my constant care. Since my 
four and twentieth year, I have been blooded above 
one hundred and ten times, in eighty of which I 
have performed the operation on myself with my own 
