CHAPTER III. 



Medical Experiences. 



Although not generally realized, perhaps, 

 Tegetmeier's medical education and experience 

 lasted for a period of ten years — a fact to 

 which he himself occasionally referred. Once in 

 explaining his reasons for forsaking medicine for 

 the journalistic and Bohemian life he led, he 

 wrote that as it was not held as any disgrace for 

 barristers to wander into other pursuits — " I, as 

 a man who spent ten years in acquiring the 

 knowledge of my profession, may be excused 

 for throwing physic to the dogs, and my own 

 lot with a Bohemian coterie, and in preferring 

 literature and poverty to riches and medical 

 practice." Nevertheless he worked assiduously at 

 the business while he was in it, and he always 

 retained a vivid recollection of this phase of his 

 career, at one time of which he acted as clinical 

 clerk to Dr. Elliotson, when the latter was con- 

 sulting physician to University College Hospital. 

 But even in the earliest days of his medical 

 studies Tegetmeier objected to the mechanical 

 drudgery of the profession, to the dispensing, and 

 especially to the commercial — the apothecary's 

 side of the business, and the very idea of " keeping 

 a shop " was distasteful to him. 



