could disclose; and his seniors and competitors were among the most distinguished provincial physicians of England. But, during this probationary period, his sense of duty caused him to pay as much attention to the minutest points of practice, in attending his poor patients, as if his fortune had depended upon it. Among other things, he felt a most laudable anxiety to secure them from the carelessness which he too often witnessed, with respect to the manner of performing vaccination; and, commenting on the indifference he sometimes observed to prevail on this subject, he expresses himself, in a letter now by me, very strongly concerning those who “ practice medicine as a lucrative art merely, and seem to have no feeling that it is a science which they are bound conscientiously to understand and exercise; that neither rank nor station ought to influence them where attention is necessary, and that in affecting to administer to the maladies of those who are not affluent enough to remunerate them, they are committing a base and felonious deception.”
A friend and neighbour, who knew him most intimately, a surgeon of the highest respectability, who had daily opportunities of seeing him for many successive years, and whose friendly offices only ceased when all human attention became in vain, has so well described his habits and character as a practitioner, in a letter with which he has favoured me, that it would be unjust to Dr. Darwall's memory not to quote his own words. Mr. Wickenden will, I know, require no apology for my doing what is dictated by such a wish, respecting one whom he
