STUDENT LIFE AND EARLY MANHOOD 



advantage he gained by being obliged to pass through 

 the curriculum of medical study. In a famous lecture 

 on Thought in Medicine, delivered in 1877, he remarked, 

 ' My own original inclination was towards physics ; 

 external circumstances obliged me to commence 

 the study of medicine. It had, however, been the 

 custom of a former time to combine the study of 

 medicine with that of the natural sciences, and what- 

 ever in this was compulsory I must consider fortunate ; 

 not merely that I entered medicine at a time in 

 which any one who was even moderately at home 

 in physical considerations found a virgin field for 

 cultivation, but I consider the study of medicine to 

 have been that training which preached more im- 

 pressively and more convincingly than any other 

 could have done, the everlasting principles of all 

 scientific work ; principles which are so simple and 

 yet are ever forgotten again ; so clear and yet 

 always so hidden by a deceptive veil.' l 



The practical side of the medical art also appealed 

 to his kindly nature. In the same lecture he remarks : 

 1 Perhaps only he can appreciate the immense im- 

 portance and the frightful practical scope of the 

 problems of medical theory, who has watched the 

 fading eye of approaching death, and witnessed the 

 distracted grief of affection, and who has asked 

 himself the solemn questions, Has all been done 

 which could be done to ward off the dread event ? 



1 Popular Lectures, 1 88 1, p. 2O2. 



