to come. He
was of a very cheerful disposition and pathetically proud of his left
side which was normal. Very suddenly one day he died--the reason
assigned being that his head fell forward and choked him, being too
heavy for him to lift up.

In 1886 I passed my examinations and duly became a member of the
College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England;
and sought some field for change and rest, where also I could use my
newly acquired license to my own, if to no one else's, benefit. Among
the patients who came to the London Hospital, there were now and again
fishermen from the large fishing fleets of the North Sea. They lived
out, as it were, on floating villages, sending their fish to market
every day by fast cutters. Every two or three months, as their turn
came round, a vessel would leave for the home port on the east coast,
being permitted, or supposed to be permitted, a day at home for each
full week at sea. As the fleets kept the sea summer and winter and the
boats were small, not averaging over sixty tons, it was a hazardous
calling. The North Sea is nowhere deeper than thirty fathoms, much of
it being under twenty, and in some places only five. Indeed, it is a
recently sunken and still sinking portion of Europe, so much so that
the coasts on both sides are constantly receding, and when Heligoland
was handed over by the English to the Kaiser, it was said that he
would have to keep jacking it up or soon there would be none left.
Shallow waters exposed to the fierce gales which sweep the German
Ocean make deep and dangerous seas, which readily break and wash the
decks of craft with low freeboard, such as the North Sea vessels are
obliged to have in order to get boats in and out to ferry their fish
to the cutter.

There being no skilled aid at hand, the quickest way to get help used
to be to send an injured man to market with the fish. Often it was a
long journey of many days, simple fractures became compound, and limbs
and faculties were often thus lost. It so happened that Sir Frederick
Treves had himself a love for navigating in small sailing craft. He
had made it a practice to cross the English Channel to Calais in a
sailing lugger every Boxing Day--that is, the day after Christmas. He
was especially interested in those "that go down to the sea in ships"
and had recently made a trip among the fishing fleets. He told me that
a small body of men, interested in the religious and social welf