The Naturalist on the River Amazons

"In my own book, Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment , I talk much more about Richard Spruce, who was a friend and colleague of Bates. Both men spent more than a decade in the Amazon basin collecting flora and fauna. I read The Naturalist on the River Amazons when I was in the sixth form at school and it has been a constant companion. In quiet moments I go back to it and read ten pages or so, following Bates on his long journey downriver. He describes a place of great beauty and splendour, a place to escape to. When I came down to London from school for my interview at the Royal London Hospital, I talked about botany for about twenty minutes. One of my inquisitors asked me how my considerable interest in botany could help me to be a good doctor. At the time, I talked about plants as medicines—and I’m sure there are still many natural remedies waiting to be discovered. But what I later realized is that botany had helped me not only to observe very carefully, but to record accurately and meticulously what I had seen. I see myself as a fieldworker not as an inductive scientist. The hospital ward is my Amazon jungle and it is where I hunt down new diseases."