The Final Journey of Thomas Hodgkin

Jaffa, 1866

Dr. Thomas Hodgkin was sixty-seven years old when he returned to the Holy Land.

This was his second journey—and he knew, with quiet certainty, that it would likely be his last. The damp air of London had grown heavy on his lungs, and he no longer had the strength to pursue all the hopes that had once stirred his heart. Yet when Sir Moses Montefiore, his friend of more than forty years, invited him to accompany him on one final philanthropic mission to Palestine, Hodgkin did not hesitate.

Sunlit waves glistened as the steamship anchored off the coast of Jaffa. Wrapped in a linen coat despite the warmth of spring, Dr. Hodgkin stood on deck, gazing at the city with quiet reverence. The ancient harbor stretched before him—white stone houses, olive orchards, and the fragrance of citrus borne upon the breeze.

Montefiore awaited him on the quay, a broad-brimmed hat shading his solemn face. Hodgkin disembarked slowly, his frame thin yet upright, his eyes alert and watchful.

Montefiore embraced him warmly.

“You’ve made it, Thomas,” he said. “You have endured the hardships of the journey.”

“I had to,” Hodgkin replied with a faint smile. “You spoke of this land as if it still held a promise. I wished to see it once again —before... well, before time overtook me.”

Their mission was humanitarian.

Montefiore had devoted years of effort to improving the lives of Jews within the Ottoman Empire, and Hodgkin, although retired from his medical practice, had never turned away from acts of charity.

To most physicians of his time, illnesses were mere pathology. To Hodgkin, they were social wounds—symptoms of deeper afflictions—that demanded understanding, healing, and, ultimately, prevention through justice.

He accompanied his friend as both advisor and companion.

Together, they traveled dusty roads, passing orchards and stone walls cracked by the ravages of time. The route from Jaffa to Jerusalem was little more than a scar of rock—exposed to the burning sun and the mercy of brigands.

Near a dried-out well, a guide told them of a band of pilgrims who had been robbed there just the week before.

In a nearby village, a barefoot child stood at a gate, dried blood on his lips. Hodgkin halted.

“Mountain fever,” he whispered hoarsely to his aide. “Here, no faith in medicine can avail us.”

During one of the journey’s pauses, he turned to Montefiore.

“You once told me this land would bloom again. But look—ignorance, open sewers, sickly children… were we right in coming here?”

A few days later, he fell gravely ill.

It began with a high fever, soon followed by incessant diarrhea and growing weakness. The local doctor confirmed what Hodgkin already knew: dysentery. Contaminated water—a common disease, but fatal to his weakened frame. His condition worsened by the hour.

Montefiore moved him to a quiet house on the edge of town. Fig trees cast their shade across the courtyard, and the distant shimmer of the sea offered the illusion of serenity. Though his work in the Holy Land was far from done, Montefiore could not bring himself to leave his friend to fate.

One evening, Hodgkin spoke:

“Some days ago, I met an Arab child by the well. His skin was as yellow as sand, and his mother begged for clean water. I gave her one of our last bottles.”

Montefiore did not raise his gaze. “You showed kindness,” he finally replied. “But perhaps it would have been wiser to save it for a Jewish patient in need.”

“Compassion asks no creed,” Hodgkin murmured. “Pain is pain—whether the name uttered in prayer is Allah, Adonai, or none at all.”

Montefiore remained silent for a long moment, then quietly added,

“And yet—Israel is God’s chosen people. If we do not care for them, who will?”

Hodgkin closed his eyes. “And who shall care for the rest? Do you not fear that it is precisely our clinging to distinctions that keep redemption at bay?”

Montefiore rose and began to pace, his steps measured and deliberate.

“Redemption is born of identity, not its dissolution,” he said. “I give to all, Thomas—but my giving begins with my people.”

Hodgkin opened his eyes, his gaze resigned and sorrowful.

“And I, my dear friend, truly belong to no people.”

A soft breeze passed through the fig branches, carrying the scent of ripe fruit.

“Do not be angry,” Hodgkin murmured. “I did not mean to rebuke—only to ask if justice, too, can belong to no one.”

“I am not angry,” Montefiore replied softly. “Only grieved.”

Hodgkin spent his final days drifting between wakefulness and dreams, quoting scripture and jotting thoughts in a trembling hand.

One afternoon, he turned to Montefiore and whispered,

“Strange, isn’t it? I studied diseases of the blood—lymphatic swellings, mysterious fevers—and now I am to die of something as ancient and mundane as dysentery.”

In those remaining days, his speech became sparse. He wrote in his journal:

"What, I wonder, shall endure the reflection of time? His eyes strained against the candle’s fading light.

The disease I named—

Or the lives I tried to redeem from suffering?"

Perhaps in those moments, he thought of the illness he had described decades earlier, the lymphatic ailment destined to bear his name: Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Yet he never sought renown.

He saw himself as more than a pathologist. He was a Quaker, a reformer, and a steadfast advocate for the weak and forgotten. Whether probing the human body or opposing slavery, a profound belief governed his life that true healing was as much moral as it was physical.

His contribution, he felt, was a stone in the edifice of knowledge—not a laureled crown.

His legacy, he hoped, would rest not in his name but in his deeds—not for his own sake but for the sake of others.

On April 4, 1866, Thomas Hodgkin passed away in Jaffa, far from his English homeland, in the heart of the land once called "the Land of Prophets."

His death shook Montefiore.

No cemetery in the city would receive his body—neither Jewish, nor Orthodox Christian, nor Muslim. In death, as in life, the lines of faith remained unyielding. Hodgkin, an English Quaker, belonged to none.

Yet Montefiore refused to let his friend be forgotten or buried as a stranger in a foreign land.

Instead, Montefiore purchased a small plot of land near the American colony at the edge of Jaffa—a hidden orchard, nestled among fig and cypress trees. There, in what would become a modest cemetery, Thomas Hodgkin was laid to rest.

Montefiore placed a simple obelisk above his grave, inscribed in English and Hebrew:

“This stone is raised to the memory of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin,

who died on April 4th, 1866, in his 68th year.

Renowned alike for his scientific achievements and his moral worth.”

-----

The words I write now are meant to be read aloud to a group of American visitors.

But these are no ordinary tourists.

They are Evangelical Christians, men and women of wealth and influence. Among them are physicians and prominent figures who have come to explore the possibility of a generous donation—perhaps even the founding of a new hospital in Beer Sheba.

After the pandemic. After long months of war. After wave upon wave of restless, indifferent youth—for whom the only path to loving this land winds through the glass of a phone screen.

My feet, which have trodden this country length and breadth, which know every trail, every lookout, every nature reserve—lead me back once more to this forgotten plot.

Years passed. The land changed hands. Jaffa was folded into Tel Aviv. The little cemetery faded into obscurity, devoured by thorns and shadow.

But the grave remained.

Even today, among cracked stones and the murmur of wind through the trees, one can still find the resting place of Hodgkin—quiet, modest, eternal.

I write these words without a hint of cynicism. I feel the weight of duty resting on my shoulders.

“Beneath this stone rests not only the man who named a disease,

but a soul who believed that medicine, at its noblest, is an act of love.

He came to heal—and in dying, left behind something more profound than any discovery: devotion.”