[Illustration: O]Our hero once more undergoes the process of grinding
before he presents himself in Lincoln's-inn Fields for examination at the
College of Surgeons. Almost the last affair which our hero troubles
himself about is the Examination at the College of Surgeons; and as his
anatomical knowledge requires a little polishing before he presents
himself in Lincoln's-inn Fields, he once more undergoes the process of
grinding.
The grinder for the College conducts his tuition in the same style as the
grinder for the Hall--often they are united in the same individual, who
perpetually has a vacancy for a resident pupil, although his house is
already quite full; somewhat resembling a carpet-bag, which was never yet
known to be so crammed with articles, but you might put something in
besides. The class is carried on similar to the one we have already
quoted; but the knowledge required does not embrace the same multiformity
of subjects; anatomy and surgery being the principal points.
Our old friends are assembled to prepare for their last examination, in a
room fragrant with the amalgamated odours of stale tobacco-smoke,
varnished bones, leaky preparations, and gin-and-water. Large anatomical
prints depend from the walls, and a few vertebræ, a lower jaw, and a
sphenoid bone, are scattered upon the table.
"To return to the eye, gentlemen," says the grinder; "recollect the
Petitian Canal surrounds the Cornea. Mr. Rapp, what am I talking about?"
Mr. Rapp, who is drawing a little man out of dots and lines upon the
margin of his "Quain's Anatomy," starts up, and observes--"Something about
the Paddington Canal running round a corner, sir."
"Now, Mr. Rapp, you must pay me a little more attention," expostulates the
teacher. "What does the operation for cataract resemble in a familiar
point of view?"
"Pushing a boat-hook through the wall of a house to pull back the
drawing-room blinds," answers Mr. Rapp.
"You are incorrigible," says the teacher, smiling at the simile, which
altogether is an apt one. "Did you ever see a case of bad cataract?"
"Yes, sir, ever-so-long ago--the Cataract of the Ganges at Astley's. I
went to the gallery, and had a mill with--"
"There, we don't want particulars," interrupts the grinder; "but I would
recommend you to mind your eyes, especially if you get under Guthrie. Mr.
Muff, how do you define an ulcer?"
"The establishment of a raw," replies Mr. Muff.
"Tit! tit! tit!" continues the teacher, with an expression of pity. "Mr.
Simpson, perhaps you can tell Mr. Muff what an ulcer is?"
"An abrasion of the cuticle produced by its own absorption," answers Mr.
Simpson, all in a breath.
"Well. I maintain it's easier to say a _raw_ than all that," observes Mr.
Muff.
"Pray, silence. Mr. Manhug, have you ever been sent for to a bad incised
wound?"
"Yes, sir, when I was an apprentice: a man using a chopper cut off his
hand."
"And what did you do?"
"Cut off myself for the governor, like a two-year old."
"But now you have no governor, what plan would you pursue in a similar
case?"
"Send for the nearest doctor--call him in."
"Yes, yes, but suppose he wouldn't come?"
"Call him out, sir."
"Pshaw! you are all quite children," exclaims the teacher. "Mr. Simpson,
of what is bone chemically composed?"
"Of earthy matter, or _phosphate of lime_, and animal matter, or
_gelatine_."
"Very good, Mr. Simpson. I suppose you don't know a great deal a bout
bones, Mr. Rapp?"
"Not much, sir. I haven't been a great deal in that line. They give a
penny for three pounds in Clare Market. That's what I call popular
osteology."
"Gelatine enters largely into the animal fibres," says the leader,
gravely. "Parchment, or skin, contains an important quantity, and is used
by cheap pastry-cooks to make jellies."
"Well, I've heard of eating your _words_," says Mr. Rapp, "but never your
_deeds_."
"Oh! oh! oh!" groan the pupils at this gross appropriation, and the class
getting very unruly is broken up.
The examination at the College is altogether a more respectable ordeal
than the jalap and rhubarb botheration at Apothecaries' Hall, and _par
conséquence_, Mr. Muff goes up one evening with little misgivings as to
his success. After undergoing four different sets of examiners, he is told
he may retire, and is conducted by Mr Belfour into "Paradise," the room
appropriated to the fortunate ones, which the curious stranger may see
lighted up every Friday evening as he passes through Lincoln's-inn Fields.
The inquisitors are altogether a gentlemanly set of men, who are willing
to help a student out of a scrape, rather than "catch question" him into
one: nay, more than once the candidate has attributed his success to a
whisper prompted by the kind heart of the venerable and highly-gifted
individual--now, alas! no more--who until last year assisted at the
examinations.
Of course, the same kind of scene takes place that was enacted after going
up to the Hall, and with the same results, except the police-office, which
they manage to avoid. The next day, as usual, they are again at the
school, standing innumerable pots, telling incalculable lies, and singing
uncounted choruses, until the Scotch pupil who is still grinding in the
museum, is forced to give over study, after having been squirted at
through the keyhole five distinct times, with a reversed stomach-pump full
of beer, and finally unkennelled. The lecturer upon chemistry, who has a
private pupil in his laboratory learning how to discover arsenic in
poisoned people's stomachs, where there is none, and make red, blue, and
green fires, finds himself locked in, and is obliged to get out at the
window; whilst the professor of medicine, who is holding forth, as usual,
to a select very few, has his lecture upon intermittent fever so strangely
interrupted by distant harmony and convivial hullaballoo, that he finishes
abruptly in a pet, to the great joy of his class. But Mr. Muff and his
friends care not. They have passed all their troubles--they are regular
medical men, and for aught they care the whole establishment may blow up,
tumble down, go to blazes, or anything else in a small way that may
completely obliterate it. In another twelve hours they have departed to
their homes, and are only spoken of in the reverence with which we regard
the ruins of a by-gone edifice, as bricks who were.
* * * * *
Our task is finished. We have traced Mr. Muff from the new man through the
almost entomological stages of his being to his perfect state; and we take
our farewell of him as the "general practitioner." In our Physiology we
have endeavoured to show the medical student as he actually exists--his
reckless gaiety, his wild frolics, his open disposition. That he is
careless and dissipated we admit, but these attributes end with his
pupilage; did they not do so spontaneously, the up-hill struggles and
hardly-earned income of his laborious future career would, to use his own
terms, "soon knock it all out of him;" although, in the after-waste of
years, he looks back upon his student's revelries with an occasional
return of old feelings, not unmixed, however, with a passing reflection
upon the lamentable inefficacy of the present course of medical education
pursued at our schools and hospitals, to fit a man for future practice.
We have endeavoured in our sketches so to frame them, that the general
reader might not be perplexed by technical or local allusions, whilst the
students of London saw they were the work of one who had lived amongst
them. And if in some places we have strayed from the strict boundaries of
perfect refinement, yet we trust the delicacy of our most sensitive reader
has received no wound. We have discarded our joke rather than lose our
propriety; and we have been pleased at knowing that in more than one
family circle our Physiology has, now and then, raised a smile on the lips
of the fair girls, whose brothers were following the same path we have
travelled over at the hospitals.
We hope with the new year to have once more the gratification of meeting
our friends. Until then, with a hand offered in warm fellowship,--not only
to those composing the class he once belonged to, but to all who have been
pleased to bestow a few minutes weekly upon his chapters,--the Medical
Student takes his leave.
* * * * *