Birth and Early Life
Charles Hastings was born at Ludlow in Shropshire, the ninth of fifteen children born into the family of a Rev. James Hastings, a clergyman who was rector of the church in Bitterley near Ludlow, but about to take up the position of incumbent at Martley in Worcestershire. It was in Worcestershire that he was educated and spent his formative childhood, attending Worcester Grammar School. He was a younger brother of Admiral Sir Thomas Hastings.
Charles was interested in natural history as a young boy and as he matured he was drawn towards the study of medicine, especially after his father suffered an incapacitating accident. In fact it would seem he was quite a precocious student, becoming an apprentice to an apothecary initially then attending anatomy school in London at age sixteen and becoming house surgeon as Worcester Infirmary at eighteen years of age, before entering Edinburgh University at twenty one, where he was elected President of the Royal Medical Society, returning after completing his studies and gaining his medical degree, immediately to Worcester Infirmary again. He even declined a lectureship at Edinburgh in order to do so.
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