Tristram continues his story about Uncle Toby and his injury. After Toby is wounded, he is confined to bed for a long period of time. To help him pass the time and better endure the pain, Toby requests a map of Namur, the location in Belgium where the battle took place in which Toby was injured. Upon receiving this map, Toby begins to study it diligently. By forcing himself to memorize completely the map and recreate the whole scene of the military battles, their attacks and retreats, Toby slowly begins to heal as he replaces his emotional reactions to his wounds with more rational reflections on the battle in which they occurred.

However, as Toby's study of Namur expands into other battles and other histories of lands  beyond Belgium, his thirst for knowledge become unquenchable. After the first year of his recovery, Toby is well versed in the wars and in the destruction and reconstruction of towns and cities. He becomes so obsessed in his studies that he forgets his wound, his pain, even his dinner.

In the years that follow, Toby widens his focus from the histories of wars and the countries involved in them to the weaponry and fortifications used in the battles. This eventually expands into the scientific explanation of the trajectory paths of canon balls, which leads Toby to an examination of Galileo's theories of geometry. At this point, Tristram yells (figuratively) at his uncle to stop. "Go not one foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track," Tristram writes as if he were speaking to his uncle. He tells Toby to run away from his quest for knowledge as if it were a snake.

During his fourth year of recovery, Toby grows impatient with his recovery. He stops caring about cleaning himself, changing his clothes, and even ignores his doctor's instructions about and inspection of his wound. One day in front of the doctor and Walter, Toby speaks about his frustrations and impatience with his healing. He talks about all the miseries he has suffered during what he refers to as his "imprisonment." This brings tears to Walter's eyes. The doctor, too, is surprised by Toby's words, as never in the first years of Toby's suffering had Toby ever complained. Toby, up to this point, was the purest example of patience.

Tristram writes that when a patient is submissive for several years' time, he loses the "right of complaining." Because Toby endured so much pain over the years without mentioning it to anyone, now when he does talk of it, it is hard for other people around him to accept it.  However, Toby is extremely frustrated and demands that the doctor fix him immediately or he will call another surgeon to take care of him. The doctor explains that Toby is healing well and in just a matter of weeks, Toby's wound would be "dried up."

After hearing the doctor's pronouncement, Toby listens intently to the ideas of his man-servant, Corporal Trim, who has been caring for him. Whereas Toby requested that Trim find him a larger table to hold all his books and instruments of study, Trim suggests that they return to Toby's country estate where he will construct a model of Toby's battlefields directly on the lawn for all to see. The next day, Trim and Toby set off for Shandy Hall.