1842 AT CHARING CROSS HOSPITAL 29 



The brothers began their hospital course on 

 October 1, 1842. Here, after a time, my father 

 seems to have begun working more steadily and 

 systematically than he had done before, under the 

 influence of a really good teacher. 



Looking back (he says) on my " Lehrjahre," 1 am 

 sorry to say that I do not think that any account of my 

 doings as a student would tend to edification. In fact, I 

 should distinctly warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating 

 my example. I worked extremely hard when it pleased 

 me, and when it did not, which was a very frequent case, 

 I was extremely idle (unless making caricatures of one's 

 pastors and masters is to be called a branch of industry), 

 or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I read 

 everything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and 

 took up all sorts of pursuits to drop them again quite as 

 speedily. No doubt it was very largely my own fault, 

 but the only instruction from which I obtained the 

 proper effect of education was that which I received from 

 Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology 

 at the Charing Cross School of Medicine. The extent 

 and precision of his knowledge impressed me greatly, and 

 the severe exactness of his method of lecturing was quite 

 to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so 

 much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. 

 I worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was 

 extremely kind and helpful to the youngster who, I am 

 afraid, took up more of his time than he had any right 

 to do. It was he who suggested the publication of my 

 first scientific paper a very little one in the Medical 

 Gazette of 1845, and most kindly corrected the literary 

 faults which abounded in it, short as it was ; for at that 

 time, and for many years afterwards, I detested the 

 trouble of writing, and would take no pains with it. 



He never forgot his debt to Wharton Jones, and 



