CHAPTER III MEDICAL STUDIES
First experience-Tour with Mr. Bowman--Birmingham Hospital
-Accidents- Sense of pain-King's College- Professor R. Partridge and others-Escape from drowning
I 'r was strongly desired by both my parents, but especially by my mother, that my future profession should be medicine, like that of her famous father, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, F.R.S., and of her half-brother, Dr. Robert Darwin, F.R.S. As I had aptitudes for that kind of study, my father fell in with her views, and took great pains to give me the best educational advantages. He acted largely on the advice of Mr. Hodgson, who brought me as an infant into the world, and was a true and helpful friend to me all through his life.
Mr. Hodgson { 1788-1869) had settled in Birmingham a few years before my birth, bringing with him a high medical reputation, especially for his treatise on arteries and veins, and he soon obtained an eminent status as a Warwickshire surgeon. He became President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1851, and, subsequently retiring from general practice, left Birmingham and settled in London, where he held the office of President of the College of Surgeons in 1864. He and his wife died on the same day in 1869.
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