12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. II. 



hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I 

 still have vivid pictures before me of some of them ; but I was 

 not so foolish as to allow this to lessen my attendance. I 

 cannot understand why this part of my medical course did not 

 interest me in a greater degree ; for during the summer before 

 coming to Edinburgh, I began attending some of the poor 

 people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury : I wrote 

 down as full an account as I could of the case with all the 

 symptoms, and read them aloud to my father, who suggested 

 further inquiries and advised me what medicines to give, which 

 I made up myself. At one time I had at least a dozen 

 patients, and I felt a keen interest in the work.* My father, 

 who was by far the best judge of character whom I ever knew, 

 declared that I should make a successful physician, — meaning 

 by this, one who would get many patients. He maintained 

 that the chief element of success was exciting confidence ; 

 but what he saw in me which convinced him that I should 

 create confidence I know not. I also attended on two occasions 

 the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two 

 very bad operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before 

 they -were completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly 

 any inducement would have been strong enough to make me do 

 so ; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The 

 two cases fairly haunted me for many a long year. 



My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that 

 during the second year I was left to my own resources ; and 

 this was an advantage, for I became well acquainted with several 

 young men fond of natural science. One of these was 

 Ains worth, who afterwards published his travels in Assyria ; 

 he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little about many 

 subjects. Dr. Coldstreamf was a very different young man, 

 prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted ; he 

 afterwards published some good zoological articles. A third 

 young man was Hardie, who would, I think, have made a good 

 botanist, but died early in India. Lastly, Dr. Grant, my 

 senior by several years, but how I became acquainted with him 

 I cannot remember; he published some first-rate zoological 

 papers, but after coming to London as Professor in University 

 College, he did nothing more in science, a fact which has 

 always been inexplicable to me. I knew him well ; he was 

 dry and formal in manner, with much enthusiasm beneath this 



* I have heard him call to mind the pride he felt at the results of the 

 successful treatment of a whole family with tartar emetic— F. D. 



f Dr. Coldstream died September 17, 1863 ; see Crown 16mo. Book 

 Tract. No. 19 of the Keligious Tract Society (no date). 



