DR. R. W. DARWIN. I/ 



cried much while telling him their troubles, and thus caused 

 much loss of his precious time. He soon found that begging 

 them to command and restrain themselves, always made them 

 weep the more, so that afterwards he always encouraged them 

 to go on crying, saying that this would relieve them more than 

 anything else, and with the invariable result that they soon 

 ceased to cry, and he could hear what they had to say and 

 give his advice. When patients who were very ill craved for 

 some strange and unnatural food, my father asked them what 

 had put such an idea into their heads : if they answered that 

 they did not know, he would allow them to try the food, and 

 often with success, as he trusted to their having a kind of 

 instinctive desire ; but if they answered that they had heard 

 that the food in question had done good to some one else, he 

 firmly refused his assent. 



" He gave one day an odd little specimen of human nature. 

 When a very young man he was called in to consult with 

 the family physician in the case of a gentleman of much 

 distinction in Shropshire. The old doctor told the wife 

 that the illness was of such a nature that it must end fatally. 

 My father took a different view and maintained that the 

 gentleman would recover : he was proved quite wrong in all 

 respects (I think by autopsy) and he owned his error. He 

 was then convinced that he should never again be consulted 

 t>y this family ; but after a few months the widow sent for 

 him, having dismissed the old family doctor. My father was 

 so much surprised at this, that he asked a friend of the 

 widow to find out why he was again consulted. The widow 

 answered her friend, that ' she would never again see the odious 

 old doctor who said from the first that her husband would die, 

 while Dr. Darwin always maintained that he would recover ! ' 

 In another case my father told a lady that her husband would 

 certainly die. Some months afterwards he saw the widow 

 who was a very sensible woman, and she said, ' You are a very 

 young man, and allow me to advise you always to give as 



VOL. I. C 



