34: MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



God as the wise and merciful designer of man's body, must, in 

 sympathizing natures, undergo a painful shock. 



" He goes round the wards, we will suppose, with an intelli- 

 gent senior, who describes to him the more important cases. 

 There is one patient propped up with pillows, and panting for 

 breath ; he has not lain down for weeks, and the dread of suffo- 

 cation which looks out from his strangely anxious and imploring 

 eye, compels him to snatch what repose he can in his uneasy 

 posture. He has, as the senior explains, ' disease of the heart ;' 

 certain of its valves are not fulfilling the purpose they were 

 designed to fulfil, and hence his sufferings, which death only 

 will terminate. 



" Here is a second, trembling lest you touch his bed-clothes, 

 and quivering from time to time with scarcely endurable agony. 

 He has disease of the knee-joint, and the senior whispers, will 

 have his leg taken off to-morrow. And so that articulation on 

 which the professor of Anatomy expatiated in special lectures, 

 as abounding in the most skilful arrangements for combining 

 strength, flexibility, and rapidity of easy motion, has suffered 

 such destruction, that it is not only useless, but so injurious, by 

 neutralizing or deranging all the otherwise healthful, life- 

 sustaining arrangements of the body, that it must be removed, 

 however harsh and perilous the process be. 



" Here is a third, haggard and wan, beseeching the doctor for 

 more laudanum, as he has no rest night or day. He has cancer 

 of the stomach, and will linger long before death release him 

 from his sufferings. 



" Here is a fourth, a virtuous and once a beautiful woman, but 

 lupus has eaten away half her face, and the disease is still 

 spreading. 



"We will look at but one case more. It is a relief to the 

 student to turn to it, for the patient has a bright eye, and says 

 with a smile, though his breath catches a little, ' that he is better, 

 and feels he needs only the air of his native hills, to which he 

 is presently going, to make him all well again.' He is far gone 

 in Consumption, and has not many days to live 



" The facts I have mentioned are unquestionably startling and 

 sad. They drive some altogether from medicine as a profession ; 



