LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XIX 



day's work in the wards, to turn a few yards out of his way 

 on to Blackfriars Bridge, where, standing in one of the recesses, 

 he would face the wind for half-an-hour and then go home 

 to dinner. The robust appetite that had been gathering since 

 breakfast had then to be satisfied, the ' Times ' to be read, then 

 an hour's heavy sleep, followed by a huge basin of strong tea 

 to wake him well up for bookwork till 12 or 1. Such a diet, 

 unlightened by the ordinary idleness and pleasures of the 

 medical student, probably accounts for a good deal of the dis- 

 ordered constitution of later years. Sometimes he visited his 

 friends ; for instance, there is a mention in the ' Diary of Henry 

 Crabb Robinson' that in 1852 Rolleston came to breakfast with 

 him to meet ' Nineveh ' Layard. But amusement seemed hardly 

 even to occur to him. The only change in the week's hard 

 round was on Sunday, when at this particular time he gave his 

 thoughts a new turn by reading through Gibbon, storing his 

 memory with sonorous passages which he could recite verbatim 

 to the end of his life. In the afternoon the two friends would 

 often go down the river and walk in Greenwich Park. Any- 

 thing less like the received idea of the medical student away 

 from the wards and dissecting-room, it is not easy to imagine. 

 Rolleston's was a grimly serious career, and he left the Hospital 

 with the reputation of one of its hardest workers. Never 

 trying for prizes or distinctions, nor attempting any original 

 research, he simply worked for knowledge and experience of 

 medicine. The practical knowledge he had gained under Sir 

 George Burrows, whose clinical clerk he was for some time, stood 

 him in good stead when almost immediately his opportunity 

 came of carrying it into practice. In 1855, toward the end of 

 the Crimean War, he was appointed one of the physicians to 

 the British Civil Hospital at Smyrna. The Master of Pembroke 

 wrote him a letter of good advice, very characteristic of the 

 writer. ' You have profit and employment in what would other- 

 wise be the dead time in your career, possibly an avenue to 

 something great and permanent . . . You will now be under 

 official trammels. Pray be discreet as to your words. Speak 



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