A little later he wrote, "I spin my thread of life from week to week, rather than from year to year." Constant attacks of bleeding from the lungs sapped his little remaining strength, but did not altogether disable him from lecturing.

He was amused by one of his friends proposing to put him under trustees for the purpose of looking after his health.

But he would not be restrained from working, so long as a vestige of strength remained.
One day, in the autumn of 1859, he returned from his customary lecture in the University of Edinburgh with a severe pain in his side.

He was scarcely able to crawl upstairs.

Medical aid was sent for, and he was pronounced to be suffering from pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs.
His enfeebled frame was ill able to resist so severe a disease, and he sank peacefully to the rest he so longed for, after a few days' illness: "Wrong not the dead with tears! A glorious bright to-morrow Endeth a weary life of pain and sorrow." The life of George Wilson--so admirably and affectionately related by his sister--is probably one of the most marvellous records of pain and longsuffering, and yet of persistent, noble, and useful work, that is to be found in the whole history of literature.