only persons to whom he
communicated his purpose were his minister and his parents, from all of
whom he received great encouragement[8]. He hoped that he would be able
to go through the necessary preparation without help from any quarter.
This was the more commendable, because in addition to the theological
qualifications of a missionary, he determined to aquire those of a
medical practitioner. The idea of medical missions was at that time
comparatively new. It had been started in connection with missions to
China, and it was in the prospect of going to that country that
Livingstone resolved to obtain a medical education. It would have been
comparatively easy for him, in a financial sense, to get the theological
training, but the medical education was a costly affair. To a man of
ordinary ideas, it would have seemed impossible to make the wages earned
during the six months of summer avail not merely for his support then,
but for winter too, and for lodgings, fees, and books besides. Scotch
students have often done wonders in this way, notably the late Dr. John
Henderson, a medical missionary to China, who actually lived on
half-a-crown a week, while attending medical classes in Edinburgh.
Livingstone followed the same self-denying course. If we had a note of
his house-keeping in his Glasgow lodging, we should wonder less at his
ability to live on the fare to which he was often reduced in Africa.
But the importance of the medical qualification had taken a firm hold of
his mind, and he persevered in spite of difficulties. Though it was
never his lot to exercise the healing art in China, his medical training
was of the highest use in Africa, and it developed wonderfully his
strong scientific turn.

[Footnote 8: Livingstone's minister at this time was the Rev. John Moir,
of the Congregational church, Hamilton, who afterward joined the Free
Church of Scotland, and is now Presbyterian minister in Wellington, New
Zealand. Mr. Moir has furnished us with some recollections of
Livingstone, which reached us after the completion of this narrative. He
particularly notes that when Livingstone expressed his desire to be a
missionary, it was a missionary out and out, a missionary to the
heathen, not the minister of a congregation. Mr. Moir kindly lent him
some books when he went to London, all of which were conscientiously
returned before he left the country. A Greek Lexicon, with only cloth
boards when lent, was returned in substantia