For the first two months of the first winter session the fingers of the
new man are nothing but ink-stains and industry. He has duly chronicled
every word that has fallen from the lips of every professor in his
leviathan note book; and his desk teems with reports of all the hospital
cases, from the burnt housemaid, all cotton-wool and white lead, who set
herself on fire reading penny romances in bed, on one side of the
hospital, to the tipsy glazier who bundled off his perch and spiked
himself upon the area rails on the other. He becomes a walking chronicle
of pathological statistics, and after he has passed six weeks in the
wards, imagines himself an embryo Hunter.
To keep up his character, a new man ought perpetually to carry a
stethoscope--a curious instrument, something like a sixpenny toy trumpet
with its top knocked off, and used for the purpose of hearing what people
are thinking about, or something of the kind. In the endeavour to acquire
a perfect knowledge of its use he is indefatigable. There is scarcely a
patient but he knows the exact state of their thoracic viscera, and he
talks of enlarged semilunar valves, and thickened ventricles with an air
of alarming confidence. And yet we rather doubt his skill upon this point;
we never perceived anything more than a sound and a jog, something similar
to what you hear in the cabin of a fourpenny steam-boat, and especially
mistrusted the "metallic tinkling," and the noise resembling a
blacksmith's bellows blowing into an empty quart-pot, which is called the
_bruit de soufflet_. Take our word, when medicine arrives at such a pitch
that the secrets of the human heart can be probed, it need not go any
further, and will have the power of doing mischief enough.
The new man does not enter much into society. He sometimes asks a few
other juniors to his lodgings, and provides tea and shrimps, with
occasional cold saveloys for their refection, and it is possible he may
add some home-made wine to the banquet. Their conversation is exceedingly
professional; and should they get slightly jocose, they retail anatomical
paradoxes, technical puns, and legendary "catch questions," which from
time immemorial have been the delight of all new men in general, and
country ones in particular.
But diligent and industrious as the new man may be, he is mortal after
all, and being mortal, is not proof against temptation--at least, after
five or six weeks of his pupilage have passed. The good St. Anthony
resisted all the endeavours of the Evil One to lure him from the proper
path, until the gentleman of the discoloured _cutis vera_ assumed the
shape of a woman. The new man firmly withstands all inducements to
irregularity until his first temptation appears in the form of the
Cyder-cellars--the convivial Rubicon which it is absolutely necessary for
him to pass before he can enrol himself as a member of the quiet,
hard-working, modest fraternity of the Medical Student of our London
Hospitals.
_Facilis descensus Averni._--The steps that lead from Maiden-lane to the
Cyder-cellars are easy of descent, although the return is sometimes
attended with slight difficulty. Not that we wish to compare our favourite
_souterrain_ in question to the "Avernus" of the Latin poet; oh, no! If
Æneas had met with roast potatoes and stout during his celebrated voyage
across the Styx to the infernal regions, and listened to songs and glees
in place of the multitude of condemned souls, "horrendum stridens," we
wager that he would have been in no very great hurry to return. But we
have arrived at an important point in our physiology--the first launch of
the new man into the ocean of his London life, and we pause upon its
shore. He has but definite ideas of three public establishments at all
intimately connected with his professional career--the Hall, the College,
and the Cyder-cellars. There are but three individuals to whom he looks
with feelings of deference--Mr. Sayer of Blackfriars, Mr. Belfour of
Lincoln's-inn-fields, and Mr. Rhodes of Maiden-lane. These are the
impersonation of the Fates--the arbitrators of his destinies.
As it is customary that an attendance in the Theatre of Lectures should
precede the student's determination to "have a shy at the College," or "go
up to the Hall," so is it usual for a visit to one of the theatres to be
paid before going down to the Cyder-cellars. The new man has been beguiled
into the excursion by the exciting narratives of his companions, and
beginning to feel that he is behind the other "chaps" (a new man's term)
in knowledge of the world, he yields to the attraction held out; not
because he at first thinks it will give him pleasure so to do, as because
it will put him on a level with those who have been, on the same principle
as our rambling compatriots go to Switzerland and the Rhine. His Mentor is
ready in the shape of a third-season man, and under his protecting
influence he sallies forth.
The theatres have concluded; every carriage, cab, and "coach 'nhired" in
their vicinity is in motion; venders of trotters and ham-sandwiches are in
full cry; the bars of the proximate retail establishments are crowded with
thirsty gods; ruddy chops and steaks are temptingly displayed in the
windows of the supper-houses, and the turnips and carrots in the
freshly-arrived market-carts appear astonished at the sudden confusion by
which they are surrounded. Amidst this confusion the new man and his
friends arrive beneath the beacon which illumines the entrance of the
tavern. He descends the stairs in an agony of anticipation, and feverishly
trips up the six or eight succeeding ones to arrive at the large room. A
song has just concluded, and he enters triumphantly amidst the thunder of
applause, the jingling of glasses, the imperious vociferations of fresh
orders, and an atmosphere of smoke that pervades the whole apartment, like
dense clouds of incense burning at the altar of the genius of
conviviality.
The new man is at first so bewildered, that it would take but little extra
excitement to render him perfectly unconscious as to the probability of
his standing upon his _occipito-frontalis_ or _plantar fascia_. But as he
collects his ideas, he contrives to muster sufficient presence of mind to
order a Welsh rabbit, and in the interim of its arrival earnestly
contemplates the scene around him. There is the room which, in after life,
so vividly recurs to him, with its bygone _souvenirs_ of mirth, when he is
sitting up all night at a bad case in the mud cottage of a pauper union.
There are its blue walls, its wainscot and its pillars, its lamps and
ground-glass shades, within which the gas jumps and flares so fitfully;
its two looking-glasses, that reflect the room and its occupants from one
to the other in an interminable vista. There also is Mr. Rhodes, bending
courteously over the backs of the visiters' chairs, and hoping everybody
has got everything to their satisfaction, or bestowing an occasional
subdued acknowledgment upon an _habitué_ who chances to enter; and the
professional gentlemen all laying their heads together at the top of the
table to pitch the key of the next glee; and the waiters bustling up and
down with all sorts of tempting comestibles; and the gentleman in the
Chesterfield wrapper smoking a cigar at the side of the room, while he
leans back and contemplates the ceiling, as if his whole soul was
concentrated in its smoke-discoloured mouldings.
The new man is in ecstasies; he beholds the realization of the Arabian
Nights, and when the harmony commences again, he is fairly entranced. At
first, he is fearful of adding the efforts of his laryngeal "little
muscles with the long names" to swell the chorus; but, after the second
glass of stout and a "go of whiskey," he becomes emboldened, and when the
gentleman with the bass voice sings about the Monks of Old, what a jovial
race they were, our friend trolls out how "they laughed, ha, ha!" so
lustily, that he gets quite red in the face from obstructed jugulars, and
applauds, when it has concluded, until everything upon the table performs
a curious ballet-dance, which is only terminated by the descent of the
cruets upon the floor.
The precise hour at which the new man arrives at home, after this eventful
evening, has never been correctly ascertained; having a latch-key, he is
the only person that could give any authentic information upon this point;
but, unfortunately, he never knows himself. Some few things, however, are
universally allowed, namely, that in extreme cases he is found asleep on
the rug at the foot of the stairs next morning, with the rushlight that
was left in the passage burnt quite away, and all the solder of the
candlestick melted into little globules. More frequently he knocks up the
people of the neighbouring house, under the impression that it is his own,
but that a new keyhole has been fitted to the door in his absence; and, in
the mildest forms of the disease, he drinks up all the water in his
bed-room during the night, and has a propensity for retiring to rest in
his pea-coat and Bluchers, from the obstinate tenacity of his buttons and
straps. The first lecture the next morning fails to attract him; he eats
no breakfast, and when he enters the dissecting-room about one o'clock,
his fellow-students administer to him a pint of ale, warmed by the simple
process of stirring it with a hot poker, with some Cayenne pepper thrown
into it, which he is assured will set to rights the irritable mucous
lining of his stomach. The effect of this remedy is, to send him into a
sound sleep during the whole of the two o'clock anatomical lecture; and
awakened at its close by the applause of the students, he thinks he is
still at the Cyder-cellars, and cries out "Encore!"
* * * * *