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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
father-in-law had made him a shareholder in two local engineering 
companies, then on the threshold of a prosperous career. In 1880 he 
became chairman of one of them, and he was subsequently elected chairman 
of a combine that included both. The income from these undertakings, 
added to what he had been able to save from his professional earnings, had 
put him in possession of a comfortable competency. 
His decision to relinquish his practice was more immediately prompted 
by a threatened breakdown in health. But there was a larger reason 
behind it. “ I began to realise that I was gradually becoming enslaved 
to a monotonous existence of mere routine work, with the prospect of 
premature decay. My real object in joining the medical profession had no 
higher motive than to secure an honourable livelihood, an object which had 
now, in a small but efficient way, been attained ; but yet worldly prosperity 
did not bring with it the realisation of my earlier ideals of an intelligent 
human existence. The preliminary studies on which the laws of organic 
development of the human body, both in health and disease, are supposed 
to be founded, are most fascinating ; but the art of healing, which in practice 
is largely based on empiricism, soon engenders in the mind of the con- 
scientious physician doubts as to the efficiency of many so-called remedies. 
In many instances of serious illness it is often as clear as noonday to the 
skilful physician that palliation of symptoms is all that can be done ; but 
yet, if the doctor expressed a hint of this truth, he would in all probability 
instantly lose his patient. Here lies a dangerous pitfall which sometimes 
leads to quackery and hypocrisy.” This outspoken confession throws a 
curious and interesting light on the writer’s own temperament. He can 
hardly have been one of those medical men “ whose visits make it a pleasure 
to be ill,” as R. L. Stevenson puts it. Rather, he must have resembled 
Chaucer’s “ Doctour of Phisyk ” — 
“ He was a verrey partit practisour. 
The cause y-knowe, and of his harm the rote, 
Anon he yaf the seke man his bote. 
His studie was but litel on the bible.” 
As soon as he was free, he set out for Rome, where he rapidly threw 
off the painful illness that had attacked him. His physical vigour restored, 
he devoted all his energies to a line of research which he had resolved to, 
make his own. In 1877 he had been enrolled as an original member of the 
Ayrshire and Galloway Archaeological Association. Hitherto his interest 
in antiquities had been very detached, although during a holiday in 
