Volume 1
The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin.
- Charles Darwin
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.
30/422 page 12
![was 24 stone, but afterwards increased much in weight. His chief mental characteristics were his powers of obser vation and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen exceeded or even equalled. His sympathy was not only with the distresses of others, but in a greater degree with the pleasures of all around him. This led him to be always scheming to give pleasure to others, and, though hating extravagance, to perform many generous actions. For instance, Mr. B , a small manufacturer in Shrewsbury, came to him one day, and said he should be bankrupt unless he could at once borrow £ 10,000, but that he was unable to give any legal security. My father heard his reasons for believing that he could ultimately repay the money, and from [his] intuitive perception of character felt sure that he was to be trusted. So he advanced this sum, which was a very large one for him while young, and was after a time repaid. “ I suppose that it was his sympathy which gave him un bounded power of winning confidence, and as a consequence made him highly successful as a physician. He began to practise before he was twenty-one years old, and his fees during the first year paid for the keep of two horses and a servant. On the following year his practice was large, and so continued for about sixty years, when he ceased to attend on any one. His great success as a doctor was the more remark able, as he told me that he at first hated his profession so much that if he had been sure of the smallest pittance, or if his father had given him any choice, nothing should have induced him to follow it. To the end of his life, the thought of an operation almost sickened him, and he could scarcely endure to see a person bled—a horror which he has trans mitted to me—and I remember the horror which I felt as a schoolboy in reading about Pliny (I think) bleeding to death in a warm bath. . . . “ Owing to my father’s power of winning confidence, many patients, especially ladies, consulted him when suffering from](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18031961_vol_1_0031.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
