Memories of my life / by Francis Galton.

  • Galton, Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Memories of my life / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2б MEMORIES OF MY LIFE earliest discoveries related to the liver, and I was familiar with a drawings in colours that he had made in illustration, which was preserved with great respect at the Birmingham Hospital. In later years he told me that having no further use for his collection of drawings, he gave them to Dr. B. In time Dr. B. died, and Bowman then became desirous to get back his old drawings as mementoes of early work, but could hear nothing of them. By an extraordinary chance he was looking one day at prints in a second¬ hand and second-rate book-shop, when his eye caught sight of a corner of these very drawings. They were all there, and he bought them all back. He could not learn their intermediate history. It was in the autumn of 1838 that I took up my abode, as indoor pupil, in the Birmingham General Hospital, then situated near Snow Hill. My im¬ mediate chief was the house surgeon, Mr. Baker, who ultimately gained considerable repute as a surgeon in Birmingham, but is now dead. My one fellow indoor pupil had a similarly successful career to that of Mr. Baker. There were also in the common dining-room two officials, the matron and the treasurer. Matters were very different then ; I, a mere boy of sixteen, but with unquestionably an eager mir d, was thrust without any previous ex¬ perience into a post that I found in a few months' time to be one of much responsibility. At first I was set to work every morning to help in the dispensary. It was a room with a dresser and a service door at the side. I there learnt the difference between infusions, decoctions, tinctures, and ex¬ tracts, and how to make them. Possibly the reader