Volume 1

The life of a travelling physician, from his first introduction to practice; including twenty years' wanderings through the greater part of Europe / [Anon].

  • Lefevre, George William, 1798-1846.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of a travelling physician, from his first introduction to practice; including twenty years' wanderings through the greater part of Europe / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/368 (page 4)
    STATE OF MY HEALTH. the melancholy which beset me. I was embarking upon the wide world, upon the sea of life, without compass to guide, or sail to waft, or ballast to steady my boat. A pulmonic complaint, aggravated by the accession of a typhus fever, had reduced my frame to the shadow of itself. The knowledge which the study, rather than the practice, of my profession had afforded me, was just sufficient to allow me, in the nervous state in which I was, to conjure up every unhappy idea as to the nature of my complaint. Each pain and ache, every uncomfortable sensation which I experienced, seemed to indicate the last stage of consumption. I was continually feeling my pulse, taking a deep inspiration to discover whether I had any pain in my chest,, at- tentive to every little symptom which might tend to strengthen the opinion which I had formed of my case. I had two objects to attain, and their mutual accomplishment was necessary to my existence. I had to regain my own health, and to procure the means of so doing by endeavouring to restore the health of — others. 1 was much in the same dilemma as many of my colleagues, who find that in order to get practice they must first get a wife, but to get a wife they must first get practice. My medical advisers positively insisted upon my wintering in a warmer climate. All were agreed upon one point, viz. that I could not survive another winter in Edinburgh. All were not agreed, that I could survive another winter any where else.