1832 -37. PAPER ON IODINE. 8 1 



gymnastic exercises. The members were training themselves 

 for the bar, the pulpit, or the academic chair, if haply they 

 might reach one or other of these high places, and could not 

 always be discussing, 'Was Charles I. a martyr?' A novel 

 topic was welcome to all classes of students, and it was dis- 

 cussed by them in a novel fashion." l 



In summer the botanical class was resumed, but no special 

 record of the earlier months of the session remains. In July, 

 he says in a letter to his sister Mary, " My iodine inquiry is 

 finished, although not half so satisfactory as I hoped or expected 

 it to have been, and indeed so unsatisfactory that I declined 

 giving Dr. Cogswell any report on the subject : he however in- 

 sisted, and I have given him a paper which will be printed in a 

 day or two. 2 Meanwhile, till I am surgeon, I have forsworn 

 chemistry, got my window and drawers' -head purified, which 

 they will remain till some new project enters or rather leaves 

 my head ; for there are plenty in it waiting only for time to 

 develop themselves, and I hope with more success than the 

 iodine." In the following month the journal once more tells a 

 little, though only one extract will be made. 



"August 25th, 1837. I have not written anything in this 

 tome for a very long time ; in truth, I have been far too busy 

 thinking and working to have time to record either my thoughts 

 or my works ; and it is only because this evening I feel too 

 much exhausted from bodily fatigue for anything else, that I 

 have taken up this, and it is but to record feelings already suf- 

 ficiently imprinted in this book. Since I poured out my feel- 

 ings on this subject, my faculties have acquired a firmer and 

 healthier tone, my energies have been directed to the zealous 

 study of the physical sciences, and, above all, chemistry, in 

 which I hope to distinguish myself, and my harassing connexion 

 with the Infirmary has long since ceased. I have enlarged the 

 circle of my acquaintance, and made some kind new friends, the 



Misses S , kind, simple, artless, obliging. I hope for much 



pleasure from this society." Allusions to other ladies follow, 



1 ' Life of Edward Forbes,' chap. iv. 



2 See ' Prize Essay on Iodine/ by Dr. Cogswell, in the Appendix of which the paper 

 referred to appears with the title, ' On the Decomposition of Water by Iodine.' 



F 



