xxxiv NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
LIFE IN ENGLAND AFTER THE RETURN FROM 
SOUTH AMERICA 
June 1864 to December 1893 
The opening paragn.phs of this biography, together with 
the first pages of Chapter XXIII. of the present work, sufficiently 
indicate where this section of Spruce's hfe was spent ; while the 
first six and the last six chapters constitute a portion of the 
literary tasks which occupied him during the first four or five 
years after his return to England. This was the period during 
which his health was somewhat improved and he could take 
short walks (to the extent of half a mile or so) amid the rural 
scenes endeared to him by the memories of early youth. But 
during the last twenty years of his life he rarely went far outside 
his small cottage, alternating only from chair to couch, with an 
occasional walk round the room, or in the very small patch of 
garden. 
What was especially trying to him was, that for months or 
even for years together, he was unable to sit up at a table to 
write or to use a microscope, and could never do so for more 
than a few minutes at a time with intervals of rest on a couch. 
There seems little doubt that this extreme prostration might have 
been much alleviated, perhaps even cured, had the precise cause 
of it been discovered as soon as he arrived home. Yet although, 
by Mr. Hanbury's advice, he consulted Dr. Leared, the most 
eminent specialist of that time on diseases of the digestive organs, 
both he and other physicians who attended Spruce at Hurstpier- 
point and in London appear to have entirely misunderstood his 
case, and paid little attention to his own account of his sufferings 
and his localisation of their origin. 
But, four years after his return to England, Dr. Hartley of 
Malton found that almost all Spruce's distressing symptoms were 
due to a stricture of the rectum, which none of his other doctors 
had discovered or even suspected. He says, in a letter to 
Mr. Hanbury : "I have always signalised the seat of the pain to 
my previous physicians, but none of them — not even Dr. Leared 
— ever thought of passing a bougie into the rectum. They 
found it so much easier to hide their ignorance under the 
accusation of hypochondria, and to prescribe brandy-and-water 
every three hours." Under very simple treatment — enemas and 
gentle opiates — he so far recovered as to be able to work at the 
microscope for short periods, and even to walk half a mile in 
