Records from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries show the Rivers family to be solidly middle-class, with many Cambridge, Church of England and Royal Navy associations.

[1] While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Thomas Hunt had a friend who stammered badly and his efforts to aid the affected student led him to leave the university without taking a degree in order to make a thorough study of speech and its defects.

[1] In the introduction to the 1967 edition of the book, Elliot Schaffer notes that in his short lifetime, James Hunt is said to have treated over 1,700 cases of speech impediment, firstly in his father's practice and later at his own institute, Ore House near Hastings.

[8] In later, expanded editions, Stammering and Stuttering begins to reflect Hunt's growing passion for anthropology, exploring the nature of language usage and speech disorders in non-European peoples.

[8] What Hunt considered "a statement of the simple facts"[10] was thought by others to be a defence of the subjection and slavery of Africans in the Americas, and support of the belief in the plurality of human species.

[1] He also became deeply immersed in the culture; in a diary he kept of the journey he comments on the buildings, picture galleries, church services, and education system, showing his wide interests and critical judgement.

Earlier in 1893, Professor McKendrick, of Glasgow, had examined subject and reported unfavourably on the scant knowledge of the special senses that was displayed by the candidates;[23] to correct this, Sir Michael Foster appointed Rivers as a lecturer.

Bartlett wrote: "how many times have I heard Rivers, spectacles waving in the air, his face lit by his transforming smile, tell how, in Senatorial discussion, an ancient orator described him as a 'Ridiculous Superfluity'!

Psychology began to thrive: "perhaps, in the early days of scientific progress, a subject often grows all the more surely if its workers have to meet difficulties, improvise their apparatus, and rub very close shoulders one with another.

"[30] His research was distinguished by a fidelity to the demands of experimental method very rare in the realms which he was exploring[30] and, although often overlooked, the work that Rivers did in this early period is of immense import as it formed the foundation of all that came later.

[30] Rivers recognised in himself "the desire for change and novelty, which is one of the strongest aspects of my mental makeup"[34] and, while fond of St John's,[35] the staid lifestyle of his Cambridge existence showed in signs of nervous strain and led him to experience periods of depression.

However the others set up a surgery to treat the native islanders and Rivers, lying in bed next-door tested the patients for colour vision: Haddon's diary noted "He is getting some interesting results.

But, altogether the feats of the Torres Straits islanders equalled those reported by travellers from other parts of the world, they were due to the power of attending to minute details in familiar and strictly limited surrounding, and not to supernormal visual acuity.

Haddon's diary from Tuesday 16 August reads thus: "Our friends and acquaintances would often be very much amused if they could see us at some of our occupations and I am afraid these would sometimes give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme – so trivial would they appear ... for example one week we were mad on cat's cradle – at least Rivers, Ray and I were – McDougall soon fell victim and even Myers eventually succumbed.

The first eleven chapters of The Todas represented in 1906 a novel approach to the presentation of ethnographic data, one that, under the influence of Malinowski, would later become a standard practice in British social anthropology.

Upon his return to England from the Torres Strait, Rivers became aware of a series of experiments being conducted by his old friend Henry Head in conjunction with James Sherren, a surgeon at the London Hospital where they both worked.

[44] Rivers was then to take on the role of examiner and chart the regeneration of the nerves, considering the structure and functions of the nervous system from an evolutionary standpoint through a series of "precise and untiring observations" over a period of five years.

[24] At first observation, the day after the operation, the back of Head's hand and the dorsal surface of his thumb were seen to be "completely insensitive to stimulation with cotton wool, to pricking with a pin, and to all degrees of heat and cold.

[44] However, the spaces between these spots remained insensitive at first, unless sensations- such as heat or cold- reached above a certain threshold at which point the feeling evoked was unpleasant and usually perceived as being "more painful" than it was if the same stimulus was applied to Head's unaffected arm.

[9] It may not seem surprising to us that when Rivers was to apply a needle to a particularly sensitive part of the glans that "pain appeared and was so excessively unpleasant that [Head] cried out and started away";[44] indeed, such a test could be seen as a futility verging on the masochistic.

[1][50] To Rivers, the war neuroses developed from ingrained ways of reacting, feeling, or thinking: namely, the attempt to wittingly repress all memories of traumatic experiences or unacceptable emotions.

[50] Once a patient could understand the source(s) of his troubles (which could be conscious, unconscious, environmental, or a combination), Rivers could then help him contrive ways to overcome these patterns and thus free himself from, or at least adjust to, the illness.

Paul Fussell suggests in The Great War and Modern Memory (ISBN 0195019180) that Rivers became the embodiment of the male "dream friend" who had been the companion of Sassoon's boyhood fantasies.

But Sassoon's description of the doctor in Sherston's Progress, lingering as it does on Rivers's warm smile and endearing habits – he often sat, spectacles pushed up on forehead, with his hands clasped around one knee – suggests that it was more than liking he felt.

[15] River's theory of the neuroses incorporates everything he had researched up until this point and was designed to "consider the general biological function of the process by which experience passes into the region of the unconscious...."[15] (pp. 5–6).

Not all of his friends from former years welcomed these changes; some felt that, along with his shyness, his scientific caution and good sense may have deserted him to a degree but most people who saw how happy Rivers had become agreed that the slight alterations to his character were for the better.

Everybody who came into contact with him was stimulated and helped to a degree which those who are acquainted only with his published works can never fully realise... it is of Rivers as a man that we think; of his eager and unconquerable optimism, and of his belief in the possible greatness of all things human.

The dilemmas faced by Rivers are brought to the fore and the strain leads him to become ill; on sick leave he visits his brother and the Heads and we learn more about his relationships outside of hospital life.

The juxtaposition of the two very different doctors highlights the unique, or at least unconventional, nature of Rivers' methods and the humane way in which he treated his patients (even though Yealland's words, and his own guilt and modesty lead him to think otherwise).

Although Prior's character may not have existed, the facts that he makes Rivers face up to did – that something happened to him on the first floor of his house that caused him to block all visual memory and begin to stammer.