Editing John Keats (section)

===Medical training and writing poetry===
{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>
'''On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'''
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific {{snd}} and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise {{snd}}
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
</poem>|source =The sonnet "[[On First Looking into Chapman's Homer]]"<br />October 1816}}

In October 1815, having finished his five-year apprenticeship with Hammond, Keats registered as a medical student at [[Guy's Hospital]], now part of [[King's College London]], and began studying there. Within a month, he was accepted as a dresser at the hospital assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior house surgeon today. It was a significant promotion, that marked a distinct aptitude for medicine; and it brought greater responsibility and a heavier workload.<ref name="NDB"/> 

Keats's long and expensive medical training with Hammond and at Guy's Hospital led his family to assume he would pursue a lifelong career in medicine, assuring financial security, and it seems that, at this point, Keats had a genuine desire to become a doctor.<ref name="NDB"/><ref name="Poemsletters"/> He lodged near the hospital, at 28 St Thomas's Street in Southwark, with other medical students, including [[Henry Stephens (doctor)|Henry Stephens]] who gained fame as an inventor and ink magnate.<ref>Motion (1998), p. 74.</ref>

Keats's training took up increasing amounts of his writing time and he became increasingly ambivalent about it. He felt he was facing a stark choice.<ref name="Poemsletters"/><ref>Motion (1998), p. 98.</ref> He had written his first extant poem, "An Imitation of Spenser", in 1814, when he was 19. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as [[Leigh Hunt]] and [[Lord Byron]], and beleaguered by family financial crises, he suffered periods of depression. His brother George wrote that John "feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself."<ref>Motion (1997), p. 94.</ref> In 1816, Keats received his [[Worshipful Society of Apothecaries|apothecary's licence]], which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician and surgeon, but before the end of the year he informed his guardian that he resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.<ref name="NDB"/>