From the period of our last Chapter our friend commences to adopt the
attributes of the mature student. His notes are taken as before at each
lecture he attends, but the lectures are fewer, and the notes are never
fairly transcribed; at the same time they are interspersed with a larger
proportion of portraits of the lecturer, and other humorous conceits. He
proposes at lunch-time every day that he and his companions should "go the
odd man for a pot;" and the determination he had formed at his entry to
the school, of working the last session for all the prizes, and going up
to the Hall on the Thursday and the College on the Friday without
grinding, appears somewhat difficult of being carried into execution.
It is at this point of his studies that the student commences a steady
course of imaginary dissection: that is to say, he keeps a chimerical
account of extremities whose minute structure he has deeply investigated
(in his head), and received in return various sums of money from home for
the avowed purpose of paying for them. If he really has put his name down
for any heads and necks or pelvic viscera at the commencement of the
season, when he had imbibed and cherished some lunatic idea "that
dissection was the sheet-anchor of safety at the College," he becomes a
trafficker in human flesh, and disposes of them as quickly as he can to
any hard-working man who has his examination in perspective.
He now assumes a more independent air, and even ventures to chalk odd
figures on the black board in the theatre. He has been known, previously
to the lecture, to let down the skeleton that hangs by a balance weight
from the ceiling, and, inserting its thumb in the cavity of its nose, has
there secured it with a piece of thread, and then, placing a short pipe in
its jaws, has pulled it up again. His inventive faculties are likewise
shown by various diverting objects and allusions cut with his knife upon
the ledge before him in the lecture-room, whereon the new men rest their
note-books and the old ones go to sleep. In vain do the directors of the
school order the ledge to be coated with paint and sand mixed
together--nothing is proof against his knife; were it adamant he would cut
his name upon it. His favourite position at lecture is now the extremity
of the bench, where its horse-shoe form places him rather out of the range
of the lecturer's vision; and, ten to one, it is here that he has cut a
cribbage-board on the seat, at which he and his neighbour play during the
lecture on Surgery, concealing their game from common eyes by spreading a
mackintosh cape on the desk before them. His conversation also gradually
changes its tone, and instead of mildly inquiring of the porter, on his
entering the school of a morning, what is for the day's anatomical
demonstration, he talks of "the regular lark he had last night at the
Eagle, and how jolly screwed he got!"--a frank admission, which bespeaks
the candour of his disposition.
Careful statistics show us that it is about the end of November the new
man first makes the acquaintance of his uncle; and observant people have
remarked, as worthy of insertion in the Medical Almanack amongst the usual
phenomena of the calendar--"About this time dissecting cases and
tooth-instruments appear in the windows, and we may look for watches
towards the beginning of December." Although this is his first transaction
on his own account, yet his property has before ascended the spout, when
some unprincipled student, at the beginning of the season, picked his
pocket of a big silver lancet-case, which he had brought up with him from
the country; and having, pledged it at the nearest money-lender's, sent
him the duplicate in a polite note, and spent the money with some other
dishonest young men, in drinking their victim's health in his absence.
And, by the way, it is a general rule that most new men delight to carry
big lancet-cases, although they have about as much use for them as a
lecturer upon practice of physic has for top boots.
Thus gradually approaching step by step towards the perfection of his
state, the new man's first winter-session passes; and it is not unlikely
that, at the close of the course, he may enter to compete for the
anatomical prize, which he sometimes gets by stealth, cribbing his answers
from a tiny manual of knowledge, two inches by one-and-a-half in size,
which he hides under his blotting-paper. This triumph achieved, he devotes
the short period which intervenes before the commencement of the summer
botanical course to various hilarious pastimes; and as the watch and
dissecting-case are both gone, he writes the following despatch to his
governor--