THE PROFESSOR AT HIS WORK.
Doctrines and maxims, good or bad, flow abroad from a public
teacher as from a fountain, and his faulty lessons may become the
indirect source of incalculable mischief and suffering to hundreds
who have never even heard his name.—_Sir Thomas Watson._
Physicians vary their prescriptions to give the disorder an
opportunity of choosing for itself.—_Lacon._
As Mr. Crowe was surgeon to the hospital, every new experiment and each
fresh result was religiously tried upon a human subject. Being a man
grateful for any little services his assistant rendered him, he repaid
him in various ways, one of the most valued rewards being the privilege
of trying “any new drug you may take a fancy to upon any of my
patients, Mr. Mole.” None of Mr. Mole’s services went unrecognised, and
the acknowledgment was not costly to the professor. The sufferers in
the wards where his beds were located would not have seen the matter in
precisely the same light had it been explained to them, but Mr. Crowe
was really generous—with other people’s pain!
“I wish to investigate,” said one of his dressers, “the presence of
lithic acid in the blood of rheumatic patients. May I blister one or
two of your patients, Mr. Crowe?”
“Oh, certainly,” said the obliging physiologist; “only you must take
precautions to let the patient imagine you are doing it for his
benefit, and be careful the nurses don’t see what you are about—nurses
are getting so ’cute now-a-days. With these provisos, you are free to
roam at large, my friend, over the bodies of any of my clinics.”
Several poor men and women broke out in great blisters the following
morning, the serum from which was carefully collected and evaporated in
the laboratory for pretty crystals of lithic acid. “They look very nice
if carefully mounted; but mind you place a black circle round the
covering glass, it shows ’em up better. Grumbled a bit, did she? She
must have the battery again if she is intractable.”
Jack Murphy, a merry, reckless little dog as we know, used to tell a
droll story of his first bit of skin-grafting in the wards.
“Graft him,” said Mr. Mole. “Don’t know how? Oh, you just snip bits of
skin off his arm and pop ’em on the raw surface of the burnt leg, and
in a few days you’ll find ’em growing like watercress all over the
shop. Perfectly simple. One of the grandest discoveries of modern
surgery.”
Now these directions, although satisfactory to the adept, were wanting
in lucidity to the pupil; and Mr. Murphy, who never liked to admit even
to himself that there was anything in his profession too hard for him,
went down into the erysipelas ward and set to work upon his wretched
victim with a light heart.
“Going to heal up your leg, old chap, in a brace of shakes. Splendid
invention for putting a new skin on your leg. Sha’n’t hurt you a bit.
Don’t squeal. I’m just going to snip off a tiny bit or two from your
arm, and transplant ’em on to your leg.” And having cheered up the
patient with a stiff glass of grog which the nurse had at command, the
vigorous young dresser took off a dozen or more pieces of skin the size
of a threepenny-piece, from the arms, and scattered them in likely
places on the badly healing burn.
When Mr. Murphy entered the dining-room that night, he was received
with a perfect roar of laughter from the house surgeons, who had become
aware of the ignorant barbarity the burnt man had suffered; and Mr.
Murphy was made to know that his idea of a snip of skin for grafting
was at least a hundred times in excess of what it ought to be, and that
for the future he must be less generous with his pound of flesh. Even
the patient found out the error, and Murphy, who was a good-hearted
fellow, wished he had known more about skin-grafting before he had
punished him so. It was some weeks ere the victims arms healed, and the
scars remain now, and even the operator is still sore when the subject
is referred to.
It was wonderful how they managed to get the patients to take all the
new remedies that were tested upon them. Folks are usually very careful
as to the physic they swallow. Your poor folk do not mind it being
nasty, they rather like it thick, with a good rich, nourishing sediment
and an awakening odour; but they are very suspicious of anything that
gives them queer sensations. They often return to their doctor with a
bottle of stuff which he has prescribed them, and declare that they
“cannot take any more of it, because the first dose made them feel as
if all their senses was a-running away from them down their right arm,
making them feel that strange in their toes as they seemed as if they
wore going to die.” And this when the poor practitioner has merely
given them perhaps a little quinine, or some simple diffusible
stimulant! Their confidence seems to come with the increase in the
number of their medical attendants; and when the chief surgeon, with
his dozen of satellites, supported by several capable-looking nurses,
has ordered them to take a decoction that works in their systems as if
scorpions and tarantella spiders were careering through their veins,
they submit with meekest resignation, and admire the regularity with
which their doses are timed. You can do things in hospital it would be
as much as your life were worth to attempt outside. A hospital doctor
may steal the horse where a general practitioner dare not look over the
hedge. “It’s the confidence as does it,” Mrs. Podger used to say. But
not always. Some do resent. The spread of Socialism, the tracts of the
various societies which dare to question some of the cherished
privileges of the profession, and the general uprising against all
authority that characterizes the present age, have produced a class of
patients who provokingly assert their right “to know what you are about
with them.” Such are awkward people of whom to make use.
These persons are not liked in the wards, and are frequently cured
right away and sent about their business with indecent haste. A sort of
ungrateful folk that want to get all they can out of the hospitals, and
then be off. A most unappreciative class, which seems a growing one
too. “Like to know what they thinks ’ospitals is for?” said Podger.
“Seems to me they think ’em ’otels!”
Latimer complained in his day, that “physick was a remedy prepared only
for rich folks, and not for poor, for the poor man is not able to wage
the physician.” He could not fairly say that now. It is possible, if
good Master Latimer were preaching one of his plain sermons at Paul’s
Cross, he would complain for quite an opposite reason.