32 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. n. 



practical departments of medicine, and had had no opportunities of 

 studying the nature and aspects of disease. Of these deficiencies he 

 was quite aware, and felt the importance of acquiring as much practical 

 knowledge as possible during his stay in London. I was at that time 

 Physician to the Aldersgate Street Dispensary, and was lecturing at 

 the Charing Cross Hospital on the practice of medicine, and thus was 

 able to obtain for him free admission to hospital practice as well as 

 attendance on my lectures and my practice at the dispensary. I think 

 that I also obtained for him admission to the ophthalmic hospital in 

 Moorfields. With these sources of information open to him, he 

 obtained a considerable acquaintance with the more ordinary forms of 

 disease, both surgical and medical, and an amount of scientific and 

 practical knowledge that could not fail to be of the greatest advantage 

 to him in the distant regions to which he was going, away from all the 

 resources of civilisation. His letters to me, and indeed all the records 

 of his eventful life, demonstrate how great to him was the value of the 

 medical knowledge with which he entered on missionary life. There 

 is abundant evidence that on various occasions his own life was preserved 

 through his courageous and sagacious application of his scientific 

 knowledge to his own needs ; and the benefits which he conferred on 

 the natives to whose welfare he devoted himself, and the wonderful 

 influence which he exercised over them, were in no small degree due 

 to the humane and skilled assistance which he was able to render as 

 a healer of bodily disease. The account which he gave me of his 

 perilous encounter with the lion, and the means he adopted for the 

 repair of the serious injuries which he received, excited the astonish- 

 ment and admiration of all the medical friends to whom I related it, 

 as evincing an amount of courage, sagacity, skill, and endurance that 

 have scarcely been surpassed in the annals of heroism." 



Another distinguished man of science with whom 

 Livingstone became acquainted in London, and on whom 

 he made an impression similar to that made on Dr. 

 Bennett, was Professor Owen. Part of the little time at 

 his disposal was devoted to studying the series of com- 

 parative anatomy in the Hunterian Museum, under 

 Professor Owen's charge. Mr. Owen was interested to 

 find that the Lanarkshire student was born in the same 

 neighbourhood as Hunter, 1 but still more interested in 

 the youth himself and his great love of natural history. 



1 Not in the same parish, as stated afterwards by Professor Owen. Hunter 

 was born in East Kilbride, and Livingstone in Blantyre. The error is repeated in 

 notices of Livingstone in some other quarters. 



