In May, 1856, I received the appointment of medical assistant to Dr. Walker, at the Lunatic Hospital, South Boston, and gave up for a couple of months my practice of lifting.  The consequence was a rapid diminution of strength, which suggested to me a return to the lifting exercise.  Near the hospital was a large unoccupied building, formerly the House of Industry.  In the cellar of this building I put a barrel, and loaded it with rocks and gravel as I had done in Roxbury.  Immediately overhead, on the first floor, I cut a hole, about six inches square, and passed up a rope attached to the barrel.  This rope I looped at the end, for the reception of a handle.  On the floor I nailed two cleats between three and four feet apart, as guards to keep my feet from slipping.  Beginning with about six hundred pounds, I added a few pounds daily, till I was able, in November, 1856, to lift with my hands alone nine hundred pounds.

Returning home the ensuing winter, I attended a second course of medical lectures, and, in the routine of labors incident to a medical student’s life, omitted to develop further my powers as a lifter.  In the summer of 1857 I became a practitioner of medicine.  In the autumn of that year, a gentleman, who had been looking at my lifting-apparatus, remarked to me, “If you are as strong as they tell me, what is to prevent your seizing hold of me, (I weigh only a hundred and eighty pounds) holding me at arm’s-length over your head, and pitching me over that fence?” To this I replied, that, if he would give me six weeks for practice, I would satisfy him the thing could be done.  He agreed to be on hand at the end of the time named.

In order to be sure of the muscles that would be brought into play by the feat, I procured an oblong box with a handle on either side running the whole length.  Into the box I threw a number of brick-bats,—­then raised the box at arm’s-length above my head, and threw it over my vaulting-pole, which was at an elevation of six and a half feet from the ground.  Subsequently I added more brick-bats, till gradually their weight amounted to precisely one hundred and eighty pounds.  Having practised till I could easily handle and throw the box thus charged, I informed my challenger that I was ready for him.  He came, when, seizing him by the middle, I lifted him struggling above my head, and threw him over the fence before he was hardly aware of my intent.  As he was somewhat corpulent and puffy, and the act involved an abdominal pressure which was by no means agreeable, he expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the experiment, but objected very decidedly to its repetition.