AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7 



though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers 

 would certainly not own me, I am not sure that I 

 have not all along been a sort of mechanical 

 engineer in partibus infidelium. I am now occa- 

 sionally horrified to think how very little I ever 

 knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing. 

 The only part of my professional course which 

 really and deeply interested me was physiology, 

 which is the mechanical engineering of living 

 machines; and, notwithstanding that natural 

 science has been my proper business, I am afraid 

 there is very little of the genuine naturalist in 

 me. I never collected anything, and species work 

 was always a burden to me ; what I cared for was 

 the architectural and engineering part of the 

 business, the working out the wonderful unity of 

 plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse 

 living constructions, and the modifications of similar 

 apparatuses to serve diverse endg./ The extra- 

 ordinary attraction I felt towards the study of the 

 intricacies of living structure nearly proved fatal to 

 me at the outset. I was a mere boy I think 

 between thirteen and fourteen years of age 

 when I was taken by some older student friends 

 of mine to the first post-mortem examination I 

 ever attended. All my life I have been most 

 unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which 

 attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion 

 my curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I 

 spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did 



