intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope; but
to my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures
compared with reading. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at 8
o'clock on a winter's morning are something fearful to remember. Dr.----
made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the
subject disgusted me. It has proved one of the greatest evils in my life
that I was not urged to practise dissection, for I should soon have got
over my disgust; and the practice would have been invaluable for all
my future work. This has been an irremediable evil, as well as my
incapacity to draw. I also attended regularly the clinical wards in the
hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I still have
vivid pictures before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish as to
allow this to lessen my attendance. I cannot understand why this part
of my medical course did not interest me in a greater degree; for during
the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began attending some of the poor
people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury: I wrote down as full
an account as I could of the case with all the symptoms, and read them
aloud to my father, who suggested further inquiries and advised me what
medicines to give, which I made up myself. At one time I had at least a
dozen patients, and I felt a keen interest in the work. My father, who
was by far the best judge of character whom I ever knew, declared that
I should make a successful physician,--meaning by this one who would
get many patients. He maintained that the chief element of success was
exciting confidence; but what he saw in me which convinced him that I
should create confidence I know not. I also attended on two occasions
the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very
bad operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before they were
completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly any inducement would
have been strong enough to make me do so; this being long before the
blessed days of chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a
long year.

My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that during the
second year I was left to my own resources; and this was an advantage,
for I became well acquainted with several young men fond of natural
science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his
travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and k