persuasion having gained the consent of my mother, when I was seventeen I went to Edinburgh. Here, with the exception of occasional visits to Kent, I stayed for four years, and at the end of that time found myself at liberty to write M.B. after my name.
The next two years were spent in visiting the chief continental laboratories. I embodied my researches in toxicology in my graduation thesis for M.D., and received special commendation and a gold medal for it.
I then went to live with my mother in Kent. I started practice and—fell in love.
The object of my affections was one of my first patients. And in our first meeting was a touch of romance. Walking one day in a wood near our home, I heard a woman's voice crying for help, and rushing to the spot I found a beautiful girl sitting on a bank of green moss, weeping and calling for help by turns. I enquired if I could be of any assistance. She told me she was one of a picnic party, and wandering about had lost her friends; trying to reach some nuts she had trod on a stick, and was afraid she had sprained her ankle, as she could not move it without great pain. All this was told in the prettiest way imaginable between her sobs.
I informed her I was a doctor, and proffered my services to bandage the ankle.
