The first of the English doctors to catch the fever was poor Pinkerton. He was always terribly frightened of it, and used to carry quantities of camphor about in his pockets as a disinfectant; but with the epidemic raging as it was, any attempt at personal disinfection for a medical man attending the cases was practically hopeless. Pinkerton was always talking about his dread of getting typhus, and saying that if he caught it he would never get over it. This made Denniston and myself very anxious about him; for though he was a splendidly built, handsome fellow, with an excellent constitution, his apprehensions laid him open to attack more readily, and would certainly decrease his chance of recovery if the fever got its clutch upon him. Wrought up to a state of high nervous tension by continually moving among the sick and the dying, it was not to be wondered at that we attached significance to the veriest trifles, and both Denniston and myself recollected with dismay that every one of our patients who had had a presentiment of death up to that time had died. On the last day of the old year Pinkerton became ill, and we put him to bed. He was very despondent, and I could see at once that he had an attack of the most malignant typhus. He was a very bad patient, and would take neither his medicine nor his nourishment without a great deal of trouble. Our number was now reduced to two, and Denniston and myself looked at each other every morning with questioning gaze. Fortunately Denniston had had malignant typhus in his student days at Glasgow, and was not likely to take it again, while I felt that if I could only pull through we might still be able to keep on the two hospitals. After three or four days Pinkerton fell into a semi-comatose condition, from which he never emerged, but lay in bed moaning feebly, and talking incoherently at intervals of fighting and of operations and of places and people whose names were unfamiliar to me. How clearly those dreadful days come back! We had the ever present, bitter, numbing cold, and the ceaseless work in the hospital as one passed from bed to bed, from the moaning wounded to the poor wretches who were being consumed by the fires of fever, and thence to the ghastly mutilated creatures who had lost hands, feet, ears, and even noses by frostbite. Then there was in addition the anxiety about Pinkerton, and the fear that one or both of us two survivors would succumb to the strain, and thus leave the bulk of the sick and wounded without medical succour. In addition to it all was the nervous strain of waiting for the expected Russian attack, which would have been gladly welcomed as a relief from the intolerable tension.