uxley's duties on the "Rattlesnake" were not in the line of science. His rank was assistant surgeon; but as sure-enough surgeons were only sent out on bigger craft, he was this ship's doctor.
With the captain's help the men were kept busy, but not too busy, and the food and regulations were such that about all Huxley had to do was to look upon his work and pronounce it good.
As a physician, Huxley practised throughout his life the science of prevention.
"With a prophetic vision, quite unconscious, my parents named me after that particular apostle I was to admire most," once said Huxley. He was a doubter by instinct, and approached the world of Nature as if nothing were known about it.
His work on the Medusa won him the recognition of the British Society, and this secured him the coveted surgeon's commission. Two tragedies confront man on his journey through life—one when he wants a thing and can not get it; the other when he gets the thing and finds he does not want it.
Having secured his surgeon's commission, Huxley felt a strong repulsion toward devoting his life to the abnormal.
"I am a scientist by nature, and my business is to teach," he wrote to his affianced wife. These were wise words which he had learned from her, but which he repeated, seemingly quite innocent of their source. We take our own wherever we find it.
Miss Heathorn admired a surgeon, but loved a scientist, and Huxley being a man was making a heroic struggle to be what the young woman most wished. Love supplies an ideal—and that is the very best thing love does, with possibly an exception or two. So behold a ship's surgeon in London, full-fledged, refusing offers of position, and even declining to take a choice of ships, for such is the perversity of things animate and inanimate that, when we do not want things, Fate brings them to us on silver platters and begs us to accept. We win by indifference as much as by desire.
"I have declined to ship on board the 'Cormorant' as head surgeon, and have applied to the University of Toronto for a position as Professor of Natural History."