To explain what I mean I cannot do better than quote part of a letter received since Sir Andrew's death, from a delicate, hardworking clergyman, whom I have known some years. After speaking of Sir Andrew's painstaking kindness, "never seeming the least hurried," he says: "He had a wonderful way of inspiring one with confidence and readiness to face one's troubles. I remember his saying once, 'It is wonderful how we get accustomed to our troubles,' and at another time, while encouraging me to go on with work—reading for Orders: 'If one is to die, it is better to die doing something, than doing nothing.' I have often found that a help when feeling done-up and useless. In the old days when people used to go and see him without an appointment, I have often sat for hours in his dining-room, feeling so ill that I felt as if I should die before I saw him, but after having seen him I felt as if I had got a new lease of life. I was not at all hypochondriacal or fanciful, I think, but that was the moral effect of an interview with him. I believe he revolutionized the treatment of cases like mine, and that he, to a certain extent, experimented on me; at any rate, he treated me on philosophical principles, and told me often" (he went to him for twenty years) "that I had become much stronger than he had expected. He said to me several times: 'You are a wonderful man; you have saved many lives.'"
This my correspondent understood to mean the experiments had been successful.
"He once said that if I had died at that time, there was not a doctor in London would have approved of his treatment. He gave a description of my case some years ago, in a lecture I think at Brighton—but of course without the name. The particular weakness was valvular disease of the heart, the consequence of rheumatic fever, and this treatment was founded on the principle that Nature always works towards compensation. He told me many years ago that that particular mischief was fully compensated for."
He loved his work and never tired of it. He often told the story how his first serious case, and encouraging cure, was himself. With severe hemorrhage of the lungs, he was told it would be at the risk of his life if he went on with his studies. A doctor, however, he made up his mind he would be, and that he would begin by making every effort to cure himself. With characteristic determination, he persisted in a strict regimen of diet and fresh air. "I determined," said Sir Andrew, "as far as my studies would allow me—for I never intended to give them up—to live in the fresh air, often studying out of doors; and in a short time I was so much better that I was able to take gentle exercise. I got well, and I may almost say I got over the trouble which threatened me." The lungs were healed, and a result which seemed inevitable avoided. He would often say he obtained his first appointment at the London Hospital chiefly out of pity, the authorities thinking he would not live six months, but he outlived almost every one of them.
No man could have kept on for fourteen and sixteen hours a day, as Sir Andrew did, without unbounded enthusiasm and an absorbing interest.
His enormous correspondence must have been the great tax. Most people are disinclined to write a dozen letters at the end of a hard day's work; but Sir Andrew often came home at eight o'clock with the knowledge that letters would occupy him until after midnight. His letters averaged sixty per day. These would be answered by return, except where minute directions were inclosed.
Only the other day, a friend of his told me, Sir Andrew came in the morning, a short time before he was taken ill, looking very tired and worried. On being asked the reason, he said he had not slept all night, for he went to see a patient three days before, and because he had not sent the table of directions, the patient wrote saying he would not try his treatment. "I never slept," said Sir Andrew, "thinking of the state of mind to which I had unavoidably reduced that poor patient."