“MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,--I doubt not, but we both join in constant petitions, at the throne of grace, for the life and health of our dear absent friend, thy brother. By all accounts, his valuable health is in a precarious state; and unless God provides (as I doubt not but He will), for His people, they will have abundant reason to mourn. May God give thee a double portion of His Spirit, that thou mayest stand in the gap, and prevent the flock being led by any who have not true gospel light in the head, and great integrity in the heart! My love to thy dear brother; the same attends thee and my dear sister, and all thy family. The Divine blessing be with all of us! “Thine, most affectionately, “VINCENT PERRONET.”[164] Probably it was the request of his friends, rather than his own anxiety, which induced Wesley, at Edinburgh, to submit to a medical examination. At this period, Dr. James Hamilton was a young man of about two-and-thirty, and was practising medicine in his native town of Dunbar, where he also had joined the Methodists. Afterwards he removed to Leeds, and then to London, where he was elected physician to the London Dispensary, and rose to eminence in the medical profession. He died in Finsbury Square, April 21, 1827, at the age of eighty-seven, having been a Methodist upwards of sixty years, and nearly as long a highly acceptable and useful local preacher. Dr. Alexander Monro was a few years older. Such was his ability, that, at the age of twenty-two, he was appointed professor of anatomy and surgery to the University of Edinburgh; and is said, by the excellence of his lectures, to have materially assisted in raising it to the highest celebrity as a school of medicine. Dr. James Gregory was now a young man in his twentieth year; but, two years later, was appointed professor of the theory of physic, and rose to such eminence in his profession as to draw pupils from all parts of the world. These were the three physicians who attended Wesley. He writes: “May 18--Dr. Hamilton brought with him Dr. Monro and Dr. Gregory. They satisfied me what my disorder was; and told me there was but one method of cure. Perhaps but one natural one; but I think God has more than one method of healing either the soul or the body.” Wesley’s disease was hydrocele.[165] A few months later, he writes: “I am almost a disabled soldier. I am forbid to ride, and am obliged to travel mostly in a carriage.”[166] That Wesley’s health was seriously affected there cannot be doubt. _Lloyd’s Evening Post_, for June 15, remarks: “By accounts from Scotland, we learn that the Rev. Mr. Wesley has had a dangerous fit of illness, in which he was attended by three of the most eminent of the faculty there, who gave him over; but some younger gentlemen in practice have been luckily assistant to him, and they have now hopes that he may continue his ministry many years longer.”