ST. BERNARD’S
_THE ROMANCE OF A MEDICAL STUDENT_
BY
ÆSCULAPIUS SCALPEL
“_Ars Longa Vita Brevis._”
_Parolles_: Right; as ’twere a man assured of an——
_Lafeu_: Uncertain life, and sure death!
—_All’s Well that Ends Well._
FOURTH EDITION.
LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1888.
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_S Cowan & Co., General Printers, Perth._
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST OF OCTOBER 1
CHAPTER II.
THE SCHOOL OF ANATOMY 5
CHAPTER III.
IN STUDENTS’ LODGINGS 15
CHAPTER IV.
HIS ’PRENTICE HAND 20
CHAPTER V.
THE BEADLE AND THE THEATRE 26
CHAPTER VI.
JACK MURPHY’S PARTY 34
CHAPTER VII.
NURSE PODGER 48
CHAPTER VIII.
AMONGST THE OUT-PATIENTS 55
CHAPTER IX.
“WALKING THE HOSPITAL” 60
CHAPTER X.
THE NEW MORALITY 68
CHAPTER XI.
TEA AND ANARCHY 73
CHAPTER XII.
“SEND FOR FATHER O’GRADY” 88
CHAPTER XIII.
“THE SOOTHING IDEA OF GOD” 94
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SACRED WHOLE OF MAN 97
CHAPTER XV.
SCIENCE AND FASHION 104
CHAPTER XVI.
SOWING WILD OATS 108
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LOST LEADER 113
CHAPTER XVIII.
AN EPICURE OF PAIN 116
CHAPTER XIX.
AN APT PUPIL 123
CHAPTER XX.
THE PROFESSOR AT HIS WORK 128
CHAPTER XXI.
“TAKEN IN” 132
CHAPTER XXII.
HOW ELSWORTH CAME TO HIMSELF 138
CHAPTER XXIII.
IN EXILE 147
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SCHOOL OF HUMANITY 152
CHAPTER XXV.
“WHAT’S BECOME OF WARING?” 157
CHAPTER XXVI.
SISTER AGNES REVOLTS 164
CHAPTER XXVII.
“ANOTHER PATIENT, SISTER!” 167
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DR. STANFORD WITH HIS PUPILS 172
CHAPTER XXIX.
AN IDEAL PHYSICIAN 176
CHAPTER XXX.
SISTER AGNES LEAVES ST. BERNARD’S 185
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GOSPEL AT WORK 188
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE RISE OF NIGHTINGALE HOSPITAL 198
CHAPTER XXXIII.
MRS. PODGER BECOMES A SYBIL 201
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MR. CROWE PARLEYS WITH THE EVIL ONE 206
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE HOBBY OF DR. SONES 214
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MR. CROWE AT GRANADA 220
CHAPTER XXXVII.
MILDRED LEE 230
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
UNEARTHED 239
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MILDRED FINDS HER WORK 253
CHAPTER XL.
“SHOD WITH WOOL!” 260
CHAPTER XLI.
THE TRIUMPH OF MR. MOLE 264
CHAPTER XLII.
THE BACILLUS OF LOVE 272
CHAPTER XLIII.
DR. SONES SUCCEEDS 277
CHAPTER XLIV.
AN INFANT RIVER 284
L’ENVOI 286
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ST. BERNARD’S.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST OF OCTOBER.
“Homines ad deos nullâ re proprius accedunt quàm salutem hominibus
dando.”
Having selected medicine as a profession, the usual day for a man to
enter on a course of study at one of our great medical schools is the
first of October. The almanack tells us this is the feast of St.
Remigius, the day on which Cambridge term begins and pheasant shooting
commences. Neither of these interesting facts, however, explains the
opening of the medical schools on the day in question; nor is it
explained by the circumstance that this period is the anniversary of
the institution of the order of merit for Folly, created at Cleves in
the year of our Lord 1381; nor by what good old Thomas Fuller tells us
of the holding of Lawless Courts, or Curia de Domino Rege Dicta sine
Lege on Kingshill at Rochford in Essex; though some non-medical
antiquaries, holding the learned profession of medicine in low esteem,
have pretended that a day sacred to folly and lawlessness is peculiarly
appropriate for the commencement of the curriculum of a medical
student. We will not, like the ancient philosopher of whom Montaigne
speaks, seek for learned and obscure explanations when our serving maid
can offer us a simple one, but will state at once that the medical
schools open at this season of the year because the weather being now
cool, corpses set apart for dissection keep well! Thus did scholastic
speculation vanish before the timely discovery of the legend, Bill
Stumps, his X mark. This day of high festival at all the hospitals to
which medical schools are attached is celebrated in various ways. An
inaugural address, given by one of the staff, has long been the custom
at the most famous of these; and on such occasions the freshman is
usually staggered by the picture of the awful responsibilities he has
undertaken, and made aware that he has devoted his life and energies to
the loftiest, noblest, and worst paid calling he could have possibly
selected. He is assured that he will be a benefactor to humanity of the
highest type, but must expect neither gratitude, wealth, nor elevation
to the peerage; that although
“The learn’d physician, skilled our wounds to heal,
Is more than armies to the public weal,”
he will, if he join the Army Medical Service, be looked down upon as
only a superior kind of camp follower; that, as Dr. Abernethy used to
say, if he does not claim his fees “while the tears are about,” he
stands a good chance of losing them—so prone is an ungrateful
country and a forgetful client to ignore the doctor when the danger
is over. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, however, he is
assured he will find in the commendation of his own conscience an
ever-sufficient reward for his devotion to suffering humanity. All
successful professional men talk more or less of this pessimistic
cant, like the Chancery judge who addressed a batch of newly admitted
barristers-at-law in these terms: “Gentlemen, I cannot congratulate
you on the profession which you have chosen. It is one in which very
few succeed, and most of those who succeed wish they had failed.” The
fact is, with professions and business, as with wives, men get just
as much success as they deserve. These sentiments produce on
the newly entered pupils their profoundest effect, but they are
totally lost on the older ones, who declare them all humbug, and
only intended to gull the public who will read them in the daily
papers. Many of the seats are always filled by medical men who were
educated in the hospital and school attached, who like to hear these
time-honoured sentiments, reminding them of the happy period when
they entered their Alma Mater with an enthusiasm long since damped by
contact with the harsh world without. After the address, the prizes
won by the successful students are usually distributed, and the
teaching staff dine together, and the students go off to make a night
of it, and show their new companions a little life about town.
On this particular first of October with which the present history is
concerned, Harrowby Elsworth affiliated himself to the old and honoured
medical school attached to St. Bernard’s Hospital, London—an hospital
of high reputation, with a great and renowned school of medicine. He
had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had selected his profession
with the determination to do well in it, as he had done with all he had
hitherto put his hand to.
He was a tall, slim fellow, standing six feet one in his stockings, so
dark in the complexion that he might have passed for a native of
Southern Europe. Although rather an Apollo amongst men, his graceful
bearing and manly carriage were not the characteristics that gave him a
passport at first hand to every one he met. It was the full, deep,
earnest, clear, and honest eye, by which you could look into his soul.
At a glance you took this in; there was no mistaking that, in the
handsome young fellow who confronted you, there dwelt a spirit as
brave, strong, and well braced as the frame that held it.
He had long since lost his mother—so long ago that he could but just
recall her image as that of a tall, fair, delicate, blue-eyed woman,
who had left her heart on his lips on the day she died.
His father was a retired Indian officer, who had seen much service, and
had greatly distinguished himself in the Indian Mutiny. He had been
severely wounded, and returned to England. Having recruited his health
after several years’ stay in Cheltenham, he went back to the scenes of
his former victories to occupy himself with investigations concerning
the ancient literature of the Hindoos. He soon became so completely
engrossed in this work, in which he hoped to cover himself with no less
glory than in his campaigns, that he determined not to trouble himself
with his native country or its affairs till he was able to announce to
the learned societies of Europe the full fruition of his labours. He
was a good man, and had been a kind and generous father, but became so
enwrapped in his musty literature as to be practically dead to his
duties to his only son, who, with all his kinsmen and friends of his
fatherland, had become of very much less importance to him than the
Sanskrit poem he had just discovered hidden in an image of a
cross-legged Buddha serenely contemplating his epigastrium. So it
having been finally settled that Harrowby was to be made a doctor,
Major Elsworth arranged with his agents in England to pay the necessary
fees, and settled on his son a sum of £300 a year for life, so that he
might be free to pursue his own calling untroubled by the smaller
anxieties of life till his profession should afford him a more ample
subsistence. All these matters having been finally concluded, at the
expense of much distraction from the Mahâbhârata research, the old
gentleman felt disburdened of a long-standing load which had often
impeded the even tenor of his work, and once more settled down to the
classic heroes of Indian song and the legends of his mythic age. He
felt that Harrowby was off his hands, and gave him very plainly to
understand that, pending the completion of his great work on the Origin
of the Mahâbhârata Poems, he must have no disturbing communications
requiring any reply from him. Acting upon these hints, Harrowby very
rarely troubled his father with any letters, and still more rarely had
any replies to them. He made up his mind that when he had done all the
work at the hospital he wanted to do, he would go out to his father,
and spend a year or two with him before finally settling down to
practice.