XV111 LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. 



could afford to start so heavily handicapped as Rolleston, and 

 it is no wonder that he laboured in after years to widen the 

 academical course into a system more perfectly adapted to meet 

 the needs of the age. As for himself, he overcame by sheer 

 thoroughness the difficulties of beginning to learn physic at 

 two-and-twenty, entering as a student at St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital in October, 1851. A remark by his friend Professor 

 Turner, the present editor of his scientific papers, shows how 

 new a turn his mind had to take. Mentioning the high value 

 Rolleston attached to his training in the Chemical Laboratory 

 under Dr. Stenhouse, Professor Turner, who was his fellow- 

 student there, adds, 'It was there probably that he grasped the 

 meaning of scientific method, and was brought face to face, for 

 the first time, with an experimental science.' 



The Master of his College gave him a piece of parting advice, 

 that one who was to prescribe ought to begin by making up pre- 

 scriptions at an apothecary's and becoming a practical judge of 

 drugs. That he did go to work in this way is still remembered 

 at the Hospital, for Sir James Paget writes of him thirty years 

 later : ' When Mr. Rolleston came to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

 his age and his standing in the University placed him among a 

 comparatively small group of the senior students ; he would not 

 enter into any of the school competitions, but he gave himself at 

 once to the regular work of the Hospital, and to its most practical 

 studies. He intended to practise, and he learnt everything, even 

 of the simplest kind, that might be useful. One might have 

 thought that he intended to make himself a merely practical man. 

 Yet he never gave up the pursuits of science and of literature, 

 and could be provoked into declaring a resolve that he would be 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society in ten years, and he was so.' 

 University men were few at Bartholomew's and kept some- 

 what aloof from the rest. Rolleston lodged for part of his time 

 with another Oxford graduate, now a physician in Oxford, 

 Dr. E. B. Gray. Their rooms were in Dyer's Buildings, Thavies 

 Inn, on the left hand as one goes up Holborn, where they led a 

 diligent but uneventful life. It was Rolleston's habit after his 



