medicine loomed large on their horizon, for two of their daughters
had married doctors. Of these, Dr. Cooke had already begun to give him
instruction in anatomy; it looked as though destiny had marked out his
career.

In those days, the future doctor began by being apprenticed to a
regular practitioner; he picked up a great deal from compounding
medicines, watching out-patients in the surgery, and attending simple
cases, especially if he had a capable man to work under. At the same
time he prepared for his future examinations, and got ready to walk
the hospitals.

This apprenticeship was a strongly formative period in Huxley's life.
He was bound to Dr. Chandler, of Rotherhithe, and joined him in this
quarter of poverty and struggle on January 7, 1841. The little journal
shows him busy with all the subjects of the London Matriculation:
History ancient and modern, Greek, Latin, English Grammar, Chemistry,
Mathematics, Physics, with German also and Physiology, besides
experimental work in natural science, philosophical analysis, and a
copious course of Carlyle.

But this book-work was the least of the influences acting upon
him. Dr. Chandler had charge of the parish doctoring, and the boy's
experiences among the poor in the dock region of the East End left an
ineffaceable mark. It was a grim, living commentary on his Carlyle.
For the rest of his life the cause of the poor appealed vividly to
him, because he had at least seen something of the way in which the
poor lived. People who were suffering from nothing but slow starvation
would come to him for medical aid. One scene above all was burnt into
his memory: a sick girl in a wretched garret, the boy visitor saying