Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/555



In May, 1823, I paid my first visit to him in Birmingham, and found him as laborious, and as full of ambition, as when a student. He had much increased his stock of books, but had exchanged the habit of sitting up late to read them, for the better custom of rising very early, which practice he long persevered in. He had been elected physician to the General Dispensary, and devoted a large portion of his time to its duties. In one of his books I find the names of more than three thousand poor patients seen by him, during the ten years in which he was attached to the dispensary; and the result of almost every case is stated: but these formed, I believe, but a small part of the number of poor for whom he prescribed. I have known him see, and prescribe for, more than 80 patients in one morning; and in the month of January, 1824, when he was only beginning to be known, he saw 100 new cases at his own house, for none of which he received any remuneration: within five months from that time, he had prescribed for more than 700. The number became greater in the next year. Mentioning this to me in one of his communications, he says, “ you may well suppose I cannot permit loquacity.” Of the cases of many he kept full notes, and he never lost an opportunity of examining the results of diseases in cases terminating fatally, keeping well-arranged records of such circumstances. For a time, he transmitted quarterly reports of the diseases of Birmingham to Dr. Duncan, of Edinburgh, and they appeared in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. His private practice increased very slowly. His merit was of that kind which only time and peculiar opportunities