Our Daily Bill: Facing the End (the first time)

[tealin]

In his early 20s, after his medical education, Wilson worked at St George's Hospital in London. He loved it, but the environment and exhaustion took a toll on his health, and at 26 he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. His doctor recommended he go to Davos in Switzerland for treatment, but first he went to his family's farm near Cheltenham for some fresh air and the pleasures of the countryside he knew and loved so well. While there he resumed his former pastime of sitting out in Crippetts woods to watch the sunrise.

Cold it was, and I used to wrap up well in a cloak and light my pipe and watch the sunbeams gradually lighting up the different corners of the wood, and sitting like an old stump one was never noticed . . . with Modern Painters and the New Testament and a good deal of pain, but I was most intensely happy. For one thing I thought that the end of life was within measurable distance anyhow, and that alone brings extraordinary peace of mind.

Edward Wilson of the Antarctic, pg 50