While in this state of general prostration, symptoms of pulmonary disease began to show themselves.

Yet he continued to give the weekly lectures to which he stood committed to the Edinburgh School of Arts.

Not one was shirked, though their delivery, before a large audience, was a most exhausting duty.

"Well, there's another nail put into my coffin," was the remark made on throwing off his top-coat on returning home; and a sleepless night almost invariably followed.
At twenty-seven, Wilson was lecturing ten, eleven, or more hours weekly, usually with setons or open blister-wounds upon him--his "bosom friends," he used to call them.

He felt the shadow of death upon him; and he worked as if his days were numbered.