MILDRED FINDS HER WORK.
“This is not our work,” you say, “this is the work of men.” Be it so
if you like. Let them be the hands to do it: but who, if not women,
are to be the hearts of the redemption of the poor from social
wrong?
—_Stopford Brooke._
Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire
Unknown capacities of joy.
—_Coventry Patmore._
When the ladies reached their own room that night, Mildred began at
once with something which was, evidently, uppermost in her mind.
“Aunt Janet, do you believe in special providences?”
“Do I not, dear! you know my life has been full of them.”
“Well, auntie, it seems absurd that every action of our lives should be
interesting to Heaven, but I think I was sent to Granada as the great
turning-point in my life.”
“Nothing very wonderful in that, if you believe that the hairs of our
heads are all numbered, and that a sparrow does not fall to the ground
without our Father’s knowledge. But what do you mean? Have you met your
fate in the hero of Granada?”
“No, no! Nothing in the least romantic, but I have decided on my
mission in life; you know I have been a long time on the look-out for
it.”
“I always thought your mission, dear, was to make everyone the happier
for having come in contact with you.”
“Ah, but you are an infatuated auntie, you know, and have always
spoiled me, as papa did; but aren’t you anxious to know what I am going
to be?”
“Something quixotic, Millie, to suit our surroundings. It is the
_couleur locale_ which has dazzled you; the romance of the Alhambra is
too much for you. Is it a novelist or a poet? Don’t dear; the market is
overstocked. Now, domestic service offers a grand field.”
“But I don’t feel it to be my vocation. I shall set to work to
revolutionise the system of our great hospitals. I have seen enough
to-day to convince me that, as at present constituted, they do as much
harm as good.”
“Revolutionise the hospitals! Isn’t that rather ‘a large order?’”
“Weaker women than I have done greater things than this; and then
remember, auntie dear, the lines—
‘And none are strong but who confess
With happy skill that they are weak.’
Besides, don’t you think the public is almost ready for a revolution on
this question?”
“You know, Mildred, my opinion; but I never could see my way clear to
any interference with hospitals. It is a terrible responsibility, don’t
you think?”
“Poor papa has often declared to me that the public would one day wake
up to the fact that the hospital was one of the great shams of the
time.”
“I know, dear. But St. Bernard’s having made your papa’s fame and
fortune, isn’t it rather a shame to upset the concern?”
“I have no desire to upset anything. Don’t you remember how we rebuilt
our parish church at Welby, without stopping the services for a single
day? That is what I want to do in this case.”
“I don’t quite follow you, dear.”
“Well, of course I haven’t formed any complete scheme yet; but I have
often thought that what we want in London, for instance, is a sort of
Hospital University, with a great number of affiliated colleges of
healing. Not a great unwieldy Cathedral of Surgery as they call it,
here and there, but a ‘Chapel of Ease’ at every sufferer’s door. Fifty
beds should be the limit, I think.”
“Not enough. Don’t you know the examining bodies do not recognise as a
teaching hospital one with less than two hundred beds?”
“But I am concerned with healing the sick, not with teaching students.”
“Just so; but where are your future doctors to come from if you cut off
their only way of learning their business?”
“Do you really believe the present system is the only way of training
medical men and medical women, for I recognise the right and advantage
of women students?”
“Your papa has often told me that a doctor can only be liberally
educated by being enabled to draw his conclusions from a great number
of facts; and, as each case has some peculiar feature, the more cases
he sees, even of the same disease, the more the intelligent pupil will
learn.”
“I see the force of that,” replied Mildred, “but I think my scheme
would meet it. I would make use of the great pauper infirmaries, at
present entirely wasted, as schools of medicine.”
“I fear they would prove very imperfect substitutes for the great
hospitals. I am told, and I can readily understand it to be the fact,
that the cases which gravitate to the parish infirmary are usually
chronic diseases, old-standing bronchitic, asthmatic, and rheumatic
troubles, with bed cases innumerable; and all of little or no use to
the student.”
“But wait, aunt; you have only heard of one side of my plan; it
provides for a vast and efficient system of out-door treatment. I
strongly object to rushing every troublesome phase of disease away from
home, and placing it in a great hospital. My indoor scheme would only
embrace such cases as could not wisely be treated in the family. What
at present do you take to be the chief passport to a bed in a general
hospital?”
“The malady which has the greatest interest for the doctor who has
power to admit it.”
“Precisely. But, as it is not the doctors who support the hospitals,
don’t you think the intentions of the subscribers are often defeated by
this system? Is it not, in fact, getting money under false pretences to
ask for funds to help sick folk, and then apply them to even so good a
purpose as medical education?”
“I think you put it too strongly, Mildred. The public does understand
that in supporting the hospital, they are training their doctors.”
“Then,” said Mildred, “the fraud is on the patients. Lady Ponsonby de
Tompkyns gives a big cheque to the hospitals, that she may have
confidence that no new remedies may first be used upon her. Like the
lady of the Fly papers, who
‘Wouldn’t try ’em on her cat,
If she could try ’em on another.’
You see, the public is in this dilemma—either they are deceived as to
the way patients are treated, or if not then the poor sufferers are
misled to their grievous hurt.”
“I know of terrible things which Sister Agnes has told me,” said Aunt
Janet; “and I am afraid more goes on than even she knows. Your father
told me of a case of puerperal fever which was clearly one of licensed
murder. He protested, but in vain. A poor woman recently confined was
suffering from hyperpyrexia, which no drugs would abate. The physician
in charge had become enamoured of the iced-water-bath treatment, and
the wretched woman was the first victim at St. Bernard’s to the new
fad. She was kept for four hours a day in the cold water at her
bedside. When she died, her relatives all protested she was murdered.”
“That must have discredited the treatment rather.”
“Not at all; they persevered in ‘giving the thing a fair trial.’ The
Germans invented it, and said it was very effectual in bringing down
high temperatures. At St. Bernard’s, it brought the patients down, and
the doctors could not bring them up again: and, as all the cases died,
the authorities stopped the experiments; but some of the physicians
declare to this day, I believe, that ‘there was something in it, after
all.’ Mr. Crowe was very strongly in favour of it; he said it was
physiologically right, and therefore must be so medically.”
“But perhaps the patients would all have died, any way,” said Mildred.
“Very likely; but what cruel torture in your last moments to be served
like that!”
“Yes, that is the horrible part of the business. At an hospital, you
cannot even die in peace; you are in danger of being the subject of
some ghastly medical freak while there is a gasp left in you.”
“Yet, as the doctor must necessarily be an autocrat in his treatment, I
don’t see how you can interfere with him,” mused Aunt Janet.
“Oh, can’t you! Do you think they would dare do such things in a parish
infirmary? What a pretty storm there would be if our Mr. Hilbourne, for
instance, heard of such things at St. Mark’s Workhouse! Don’t you think
the doctors content themselves with using the best of their already
acquired knowledge there?” asked Mildred.
“Yet, the poor think much more highly of hospital than of infirmary
treatment.”
“Naturally. It is drummed into them a hundred times a day by everybody
in the place, that everything is being done for their benefit. Papa
told me of ‘a very pretty knee case’ which had been fourteen months in
the wards, merely because it was an object of surgical interest, and
was the subject of a monograph.”
“Your scheme, I fear, would not provide for monographs!”
“I fear you think I am very quixotic, aunt.”
“No, dear; you are not tilting at windmills, but at real dragons, which
I am afraid are much too strong for you! But we must think it over. Dr.
Graves is a good, sensible man, and though of course wrapped up in the
conventionalism of his class is still open to reason. You will want
more armour, and a sharper sword than Isabella’s for this fight, I am
thinking.”
“Yet, I can see,” said the girl, “in my prophetic vision, our Boabdil
giving me the key of the fortress, if we go to work properly.
Meanwhile, let us build our Santa Fe.”
“Castles in Spain! dear—just the place for them. I can see ghosts of
giant physiologists and vampire surgeons guarding the treasures of
their vermilion towers, and warning you off their premises.”
“I don’t fear them, aunt. I shall visit Isabella’s tomb again for
courage, though.”
“I think we had better sleep over this. Buenas noches, señorita.”
“Con dios.”
When the time came to leave Granada, Aunt Janet noticed that her niece
was in rather low spirits. She guessed the cause, for it was manifest
she was more than interested in the young doctor; and though it was
difficult to say whether her interest was more in his work than in
himself, or the contrary, she was glad that something had arisen to
rouse the girl from the grief which had weighed upon her since her
father’s death. That was the charm of Aunt Janet—she always accepted
accomplished facts with equanimity, and perhaps was rather a fatalist.
If Mildred was really in love, so much the better—she thought it would
replace the lost light which had gone out of her life; and if, still
better, she had really found a great philanthropic object in life, why
the meeting with young Elsworth was the best thing that could have
happened.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will.”
Would it not be strange if it should turn out that Elsworth’s exile to
Granada, and their visit, should be the centre round which the lives of
two noble souls should revolve?