DR. STANFORTH WITH HIS PUPILS.
His story would not have been worth one farthing if He had made the
hat of him whom he represented one inch narrower.—_Steele._
Natural ferocity makes fewer cruel people than self love.
—_La Rochefoucauld._
Dr. Stanforth knew everybody, from “a very exalted personage,” with
whom he led the students to believe he was on terms of close intimacy,
down to the most insignificant disciple of Galen who had ever been
connected with the hospital. He never permitted a patient to baffle
him; he always pretended that he knew all about him or her, and had his
or her medical history at his fingers’ ends. His days in the
out-patients’ rooms were looked forward to by the students with
delight. He was so droll; he teased the pert and knowing patients worse
than any Old Bailey barrister. “There was no getting over Stanforth,”
they declared; “he was too much for the artfullest of ’em.” His _bete
noir_ was the over-dressed, robust, viragoish lady patient, who could
well afford to pay for medical advice, but wanted it for nothing.
“Put out your tongue, madam.”
The lady complied. Carefully adjusting his gold eye-glasses, he would
minutely inspect it.
“Did I understand you to say you were a strict teetotaler?”
“No, sir, I am not exactly that: but it’s little I ever touch except a
glass of beer with my dinner.”
“_No_ spirits, madam?”
“Very seldom, sir.”
Dr. Stanforth would take off his glasses, carefully wipe them with his
handkerchief, and readjust them.
“Permit me to see your tongue again, madam. Um—ah—h—h.” Then, after
looking at the organ closely for some moments, he would ask,
incredulously—
“You never take spirits, madam?”
“I said very seldom, doctor—never more than a teaspoonful of brandy in
a little water the last thing at night. You know you told I might do
that last time I was here.”
“One teaspoonful, madam?” with another scrutiny of the tongue; “only
_one_ teaspoonful of brandy?”
“That is all, sir,” said the patient, bridling up and getting restive.
Dr. Stanforth took off his glasses, folded them, and leaning back in
his chair, asked in his blandest tones, “Pray, where do you procure
your brandy? It must be very strong. I can get none so good!”
The woman would bear no more roasting that day, and having taken her
prescription, left the room, the assembled students heartily enjoying
her discomfiture.
The way to annoy him and put him on his mettle was for a lady patient
to object to an examination in the presence of his very large class of
students.
“Can’t I see you privately, doctor?”
“Why?”
“Well, sir, I do not like to undergo all this before these young
gentlemen.”
“You are married, I believe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any boys?”
“Two, doctor.”
“Would you like your eldest to be a great physician when he grows up?”
“Oh, yes, indeed I should, if he were clever enough!”
“I thought so. Now all these young gentlemen’s mammas have the same
desire, and have sent them to me for that purpose. If you don’t help
them, they can’t learn to be doctors. Now, nurse, assist this lady to
undress.” And, without sparing the poor creature a pang of shame, he
would submit her to a degrading ordeal, so that every one of his boys
might have the chance of learning that for which, as he said, “they
have paid large sums of money.”
To amuse them and impress them with the idea of his wit, he would, in
the presence of patient and nurses, often tell shady stories as broad
as they were long. Such droll scenes, such lively contests between one
weak, suffering woman (for he would never permit a patient to bring
mother or friend into his room), and this brilliant physician and his
admiring, tittering pupils, made the gynæcological out-patients’ days
the great fun of the place. “Beats Punch into fits!” said Murphy.
“Never half as much spree at the play!” vowed Robins. But it was poor
spree and very mitigated fun to the hundreds of afflicted creatures who
sought this great doctor’s aid; for great he was and very skilful, and
had saved many thousands of sufferers from pain and discomfort. He was
a generous, patient, useful man, and in his private practice was
everything that could be desired in a doctor; but he thought, and that
thoroughly, that he was at St. Bernard’s first to interest and teach in
the completest manner all the men who attended his classes. If in this
doctor-factory any sick woman could avail herself of the by-product or
waste for her cure or relief, she was heartily welcome. In any case,
her attendance served his purpose very well indeed—unless she became
troublesome, and refused to comply with some of his too outrageous
demands, and then her letter would be taken from her, and marked by the
doctor “_Refuses treatment_,” and she would be escorted out of the
hospital by one of the nurses.
Sometimes “a very pretty case,” as they called good clinical subjects,
would be taken into the wards, with the assurance that it could only be
effectually treated there, but really that it might be daily examined
and watched by the students, although it would have done as well or
even better at home. Thus he used a bed—at say a cost of a pound a
week for two months,—a bed which in another case, far worse but not so
interesting, would have been much better engaged. Of course the pupils
were not unmindful of all these efforts for their advancement when they
got into practice; and as they were daily qualifying, Dr. Stanforth was
daily making a number of valuable friends.