One valuable habit Dr. Stokes ascribed to his father. “My father left me but one legacy, the blessed gift of rising early.” This often meant getting up between four and five, when he would study and write till eight. During a long day’s practice he was always exercising the most genial influence, whether over refractory students or harassed patients. At the close of the day his hospitality was as attractive as his professional manner during the earlier hours. In 1870 Mrs. Stokes died, and from this blow her husband never fully recovered. In 1876 he found himself compelled to withdraw from his many public posts, and retire to his cottage at Carigbraig, where to the last the flights of birds which he had encouraged and trained came to seek their food at his hands. He died on January 6, 1878. FOOTNOTES: [13] A most entertaining account of his encounters with a game-cock is given in Dr. Williams’s “Memoirs of Life and Work,” 1885, from which most of these particulars are derived. CHAPTER XXII. _SIR HENRY THOMPSON AND CREMATION._ The mode of disposing of the remains of the dead is naturally one upon which doctors may be expected to have a good deal to say. As guardians of the health of the living, the dangers and diseases which the material remnants of our deceased friends may occasion the living must concern the medical profession. The increasingly dense aggregation of human beings in great towns has impressed the last two generations with the necessity of doing something to prevent disease from spreading through delay in burial, and the use of unsuitable burial-places. But for the most part the efforts which have been made have only taken the form of pushing the evil a little further off; and a little mathematical calculation will show that the present cemeteries must soon be surrounded by habitations, and some fresh arrangements will have to be made. To cope with these evils the practice of cremation has been vigorously advocated, as a more rational and healthy mode of disposing of the dead, by the Cremation Society, of which Sir HENRY THOMPSON is the President. This distinguished surgeon is the son of Mr. Henry Thompson of Framlingham, Suffolk, having been born on August 6, 1820. It is stated that Mr. Thompson objected to his son’s studying medicine, believing that the profession had a sceptical tendency. Thus it was not till he had reached the age of twenty-one, and became entitled to some property in his own right, that the subject of this chapter was free to pursue his chosen profession. He studied chiefly at University College, London, and also in Paris. He obtained the M.B. degree at London University in 1851, and the Fellowship of the College of Surgeons in 1853, and in the same year was appointed assistant-surgeon at University College Hospital. In 1852 and again in 1860 he won the Jacksonian Prize at the College of Surgeons for essays on subjects to which he had devoted much of his life-work.