During my residence at Blockley, the medical head of the hospital, Dr. Benedict, was most kind, and gave me every facility in his power. I had free entry to all the women’s wards, and was soon on good terms with the nurses. But the young resident physicians, unlike their chief, were not friendly. When I walked into the wards they walked out. They ceased to write the diagnosis and treatment of patients on the card at the head of each bed, which had hitherto been the custom, thus throwing me entirely on my own resources for clinical study. During the summer of 1848 the famine fever was raging in Ireland. Multitudes of emigrants were attacked with fever whilst crossing the ocean, and so many were brought to Blockley that it was difficult to provide accommodation for them, many being laid on beds on the floor. But this terrible epidemic furnished an impressive object-lesson, and I chose this form of typhus as the subject of my graduation thesis, studying in the midst of the poor dying sufferers who crowded the hospital wards. I read my thesis to Dr. Elder, and was greatly encouraged by his hearty approbation. Trying as my painful residence at Blockley had been both to body and mind, I was conscious of the great gain in medical knowledge and worldly experience which it had afforded. The following journal entry expresses the mixed feelings with which that strange residence was left:— _September 22._—My last evening at Blockley. Here I sit writing by my first fire. How glad I am, to-morrow, to-morrow, I go home to my friends! And yet as I watched the beautiful sunset from my great windows, as little Mary Ann pays her willing attendance, and all seems so friendly; as I walked to Dr. Benedict’s with my thesis, and felt the entrancing day and the lovely country, I _almost_ regretted that I was going to leave. Heaven guide me! May good spirits ever surround me! At the end of the summer I gladly returned to the healthy and hopeful college life at Geneva. Passing through New York, where I saw Dr. Dickson and his family and heard Henry Ward Beecher preach, I reached my winter’s home on October 3, reported myself at college, met everywhere a kind welcome, and settled down for winter work. The clever demonstrator again afforded me his valuable aid in anatomy, and the friendliness of the class continued. Sometimes, whilst sitting by the Doctor during some delicate demonstration of the brain, the students who were crowding round, standing on chairs, leaning on one another’s shoulders, kept most respectfully from me, drawing back instantly when by accident they touched my head or shoulder.[4]