CHAPTER III 



MEDICAL STUDIES 



First experience Tour with Mr. Bowman Birmingham Hospital 

 Accidents Sense of pain King's College Professor R. 

 Partridge and others Escape from drowning 



IT was strongly desired by both my parents, but 

 especially by my mother, that my future profession 

 should be medicine, like that of her famous father, Dr. 

 Erasmus Darwin, F.R.S., and of her half-brother, 

 Dr. Robert Darwin, F.R.S. As I had aptitudes for 

 that kind of study, my father fell in with her views, 

 and took great pains to give me the best educational 

 advantages. He acted largely on the advice of Mr. 

 Hodgson, who brought me as an infant into the world, 

 and was a true and helpful friend to me all through 

 his life. 



Mr. Hodgson (1788-1 869) had settled in Birming- 

 ham a few years before my birth, bringing with him a 

 high medical reputation, especially for his treatise on 

 arteries and veins, and he soon obtained an eminent 

 status as a Warwickshire surgeon. He became 



o 



President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1851, 

 and, subsequently retiring from general practice, 

 left Birmingham and settled in London, where he held 

 the office of President of the College of Surgeons in 

 1864. He and his wife died on the same day in 1869. 



