Genre:

Short Fiction, Satire, Serial

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Medical Treatment, Education, Collecting, Natural History, Botany

    Considers summer courses in natural history taught at medical schools to be 'most exciting' and crucial to making a 'medical man' trustworthy. Notes that medical botanists are considered 'harmless and inoffensive maniacs' by the students, and 'would lecture to themselves and their vegetables' were it not for the few pupils they can take on botanical 'excursions'. Introduces Dr Wurzel, a professor of botany, who took some of the protagonists of the story on a botanical excursion.