LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. XXV11 



civilisation generally in the American North and South war, 

 are still true to their Devil- Worship.' 



Rolleston's service in the East came to an end in 1856, when 

 a letter to his sister from Alexandria, June 12, shows him re- 

 turned from a tour in Palestine, and on his way back to Eng- 

 land. The next year he held for a short time the appointment 

 of Assistant-Physician to the Hospital for Sick Children in 

 London. In a letter to Miss Beever dated July 5, 1857, he 

 writes of his disappointment that the Smyrna Report was not 

 to be re-printed as a Blue-Book, but he was looking forward to 

 taking his M.D. degree at Oxford, and fully occupied. 'I see 

 on an average about 60 fresh cases of children from a few days 

 old up to 12 years every week, besides old cases. You will see 

 that this is a fair field for labour, and I hope to be allowed to be 

 of some use to my fellow-creatures in my generation. I strive 

 certainly to do my duty, and if God gives me health and 

 strength I hope to continue to do so in this post for some 

 time. ... I see a good deal of the London poor by this means, 

 and though I find among them much stupidity and brutishness, 

 I nevertheless see more of qualities which are estimable. Love 

 and self-denial I see constantly, and I make it my business to 

 encourage these qualities and to prevent their being neutralised 

 as they so constantly are by ignorance of the very commonest 

 things. I don't at all object to saffron, which is given by most 

 London mothers for most diseases in perfect faith, but I wage 

 daily war against veal and bacon, pork and cheese, for infants 

 of seven months old and upwards. Some mothers I find, with the 

 greatest affection for their infants, still will not ever become 

 sensible that special emergencies need special practices, and that 

 habits, however old-established, must under critical circum- 

 stances be broken through. They resemble the authorities in 

 the late war, who sacrificed 10,000 lives rather than re- arrange 

 their habits. A child I find, out of the Hospital, of course, who 

 requires attention from one hour to another, will get it till 

 10 P.M. when its mother goes to bed, but no longer, unless great 

 pains be taken to drive in the notion that mother's habits and 



