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The WINTER after I left school was spent in the Woman'sMedical College of Philadelphia, hut the development of the spinal

difficulty which had shadowed me from childhood forced me into Dr.

Weir Mitchell's hospital for the late spring, and the next winter I was

literally hound to a bed in my sister's house for six months. In spite of

its tedium, the long winter had its mitigations, for after the first few

weeks I was able to read with a luxurious consciousness of leisure, and I remember opening the first volume of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great"

with a lively sense of gratitude that it was not Gray's "Anatomy,"

having found, like many another, that general culture is a much easier

undertaking than professional study. The long illness inevitably put

aside the immediate prosecution of a medical course, and although I had passed my examinations creditably enough in the required subjects

for the first year, I was very glad to have a physician's sanction for giving up clinics and dissecting rooms and to follow his prescription of

spending the next two years in Europe