ABSTRACT
In Who’s Who Elizabeth Garrett Anderson listed her recreations as travelling and gardening, a pair of pleasures not easy to combine. To these she added a long-standing interest in the history of medicine. From 1893 onwards, no longer tied by daily visits to the hospital, she indulged all three tastes. A day’s digging, a week’s research or a fortnight abroad gave her more satisfaction than months of desultory leisure could have brought, for these recreations were not chosen at random; each fulfilled a profound need in her nature. Reading and writing about medicine provided a continuing intellectual interest, gardening took her back to her own roots in the East Anglian soil, and travelling satisfied a need for adventure which had not grown less with the years.
