How does Nicholas Bulstrode become connected to Tertius Lydgate’s troubles in Middlemarch?

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Portrait drawing of George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, with wavy dark hair, lace collar, and a calm expression, based on an 1865 work by Sir Frederic William Burton. — George Eliot George Eliot, engraving derived from a chalk drawing (1865) by Sir Frederic William Burton.

In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the connection between Nicholas Bulstrode and Tertius Lydgate becomes a source of professional and personal ruin for the doctor.

Lydgate, facing financial distress due to his wife Rosamond’s expensive lifestyle, initially asks the banker Bulstrode for a loan, but is refused. Later, while Bulstrode is being blackmailed by John Raffles regarding his own unsavory past, he calls upon Lydgate to treat the ailing blackmailer. During this period, Bulstrode suddenly offers Lydgate the loan he had previously denied, which Lydgate accepts.1

The situation turns disastrous when Bulstrode disregards Lydgate’s medical instructions, leading to Raffles’s death. When the circumstances of the death and Bulstrode’s past are exposed, Lydgate faces public suspicion regarding his potential involvement in the fatality. This association with the disgraced banker forces Lydgate and his wife to leave Middlemarch, marking a tragic turning point in his career.1