The second season arrives, and our pupil becomes "a medical student" in
the fullest sense of the word. He has an indistinct recollection that
there are such things as wards in the hospital as well as in a key or the
city, and a vague wandering, like the morning's impression of the dreams
of the preceding night, that in the remote dark ages of his career he took
some notes upon the various lectures, the which have long since been
converted into pipe-lights or small darts, which, twisted up and propelled
from between the forefingers of each hand, fly with unerring aim across
the theatre at the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other
object worth aiming at--an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture,
and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in
a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling.
His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid
of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its
contents are composed of three bellpull-handles, a valuable series of
shutter-fastenings, two or three broken pipes, a pewter "go" (which, if
everybody had their own, would in all probability belong to Mr. Evans, of
Covent Garden Piazza), some scraps of biscuit, and a round knocker, which
forcibly recalls a pleasant evening he once spent, with the accompanying
anecdotes of how he "bilked the pike" at Waterloo Bridge, and poor Jones
got "jug'd" by mistake.
It must not, however, be supposed that the student now neglects visiting
the dissecting-room. On the contrary, he is unremitting in his attendance,
and sometimes the first there of a morning, more especially when he has,
to use his own expression, been "going it rather fast than otherwise" the
evening before, and comes to the school very early in the morning to have
a good wash and refresh himself previously to snatching a little of the
slumber he has forgotten to take during the night, which he enjoys very
quietly in the injecting-room down stairs, amidst a heterogeneous
assemblage of pipkins, subjects, deal coffins, sawdust, inflated stomachs,
syringes, macerating tubs, and dried preparations. The dissecting-room is
also his favourite resort for refreshment, and he broils sprats and red
herrings on the fire-shovel with consummate skill, amusing himself during
the process of his culinary arrangements by sawing the corners off the
stone mantel-piece, throwing cinders at the new man, or seeing how long it
takes to bore a hole through one of the stools with a red-hot poker.
Indeed, these luckless pieces of furniture are always marked out by the
student as the fittest objects on which to wreak his destructive
propensities; and he generally discovers that the readiest way to do them
up is to hop steeple-chases upon them from one end of the room to the
other--a sporting amusement which shakes them to pieces, and irremediably
dislocates all their articulations, sooner than anything else. Of course
these pleasantries are only carried on in the absence of the demonstrator.
Should he be present, the industry of the student is confined to poking
the fire in the stove and then shutting the flue, or keeping down the ball
of the cistern by some abdominal hooks, and then, before the invasion of
smoke and water takes place, quietly joining a knot of new men who are
strenuously endeavouring to dissect the brain and discover the
_hippocampus major_, which they expect to find in the perfect similitude
of a sea-horse, like the web-footed quadrupeds who paw the "reality" in
the "area usually devoted to illusion," or tank, at the Adelphi Theatre.
If one of the professors of his medical school chances to be addicted to
making anti-Martin experiments on animals, or the study of comparative
anatomy, the pursuits offer an endless fund of amusement to the jocose
student. He administers poison to the toxicological guinea-pigs; hunts the
rabbit kept for galvanism about the school; lets loose in the theatre, by
accident, the sparrows preserved to show the rapidly fatal action of
_choke-damp_ upon life; turns the bladders, which have been provided to
tie over bottles, into footballs; and makes daily contributions to the
plate of pebbles taken from the stomach of the ostrich, and preserved in
the museum to show the mode in which these birds assist digestion, until
he quadruples the quantity, and has the quiet satisfaction of seeing
exhibited at lecture, as the identical objects, the heap of small stones
which he has collected from time to time in the garden of the school, or
from any excavation for pipes or paving which he may have passed in his
route from his lodgings.
The second or middle course of the three winter sessions which the medical
student is compelled to go through, is the one in which he most enjoys
himself, and indulges in those little outbreaks of eccentric mirth which
eminently qualify him for his future professional career. During the first
course he studies from novelty--during the last from compulsion; but the
middle one passes in unlimited sprees and perpetual half-and-half. The
only grand project he now undertakes is "going up for his Latin," provided
he had not courage to do so upon first coming to London. For some weeks
before this period he is never seen without an interlined edition of
Celsus and Gregory; not that he debars himself from joviality during the
time of his preparation, but he judiciously combines study with
amusement--never stirring without his translation in his pocket, and even,
if he goes to the theatre, beguiling the time between the pieces by
learning the literal order of a new paragraph. Every school possesses
circulating copies of these works: they have been originally purchased in
some wild moment of industrious extravagance by a new man; and when he
passed, he sold them for five shillings to another, who, in turn, disposed
of them to a third, until they had run nearly all through the school. The
student grinds away at these until he knows them almost by heart, albeit
his translation is not the most elegant. He reads--"_Sanus homo_, a sound
man; _qui_, who; _et_, also; _bene valet_, well is in health; _et_, and;
_suæ spontis_, of his own choice; _est_, is," &c. This, however, is quite
sufficient; and, accordingly, one afternoon, in a rash moment, he makes up
his mind to "go up." Arrived at Apothecaries' Hall--a building which he
regards with a feeling of awe far beyond the Bow-street Police Office--he
takes his place amongst the anxious throng, and is at last called into a
room, where two examiners politely request that he will favour them by
sitting down at a table adorned with severe-looking inkstands, long pens,
formal sheets of foolscap, and awfully-sized copies of the light
entertaining works mentioned above. One of the aforesaid examiners then
takes a pinch of snuff, coughs, blows his nose, points out a paragraph for
the student to translate, and leaves him to do it. He has, with a prudent
forethought, stuffed his cribs inside his double-breasted waistcoat, but,
unfortunately, he finds he cannot use them; so when he sticks at a queer
word he writes it on his blotting-paper and shoves it quietly on to the
next man. If his neighbour is a brick, he returns an answer; but if he is
not, our friend is compelled to take shots of the meaning and trust to
chance--a good plan when you are not certain what to do, either at
billiards or Apothecaries' Hall. Should he be fortunate enough to get
through, his schedule is endorsed with some hieroglyphics explanatory of
the auspicious event; and, in gratitude, he asks a few friends to his
lodgings that night, who have legions of sausages for supper, and drink
gin-and-water until three o'clock in the morning. It is not, however,
absolutely necessary that a man should go up himself to pass his Latin. We
knew a student once who, by a little judicious change of appearance--first
letting his hair grow very long, and then cutting it quite short--at one
time patronizing whiskers, and at another shaving himself perfectly
clean--now wearing spectacles, and now speaking through his nose--being,
withal, an excellent scholar, passed a Latin examination for half the men
in the hospital he belonged to, receiving from them, when he had
succeeded, the fee which, in most cases, they would have paid a private
teacher for preparing them.
The medical student does not like dining alone; he is gregarious, and
attaches himself to some dining-rooms in the vicinity of his school,
where, in addition to the usual journals, they take in the Lancet and
Medical Gazette for his express reading. He is here the customer most
looked up to by the proprietor, and is also on excellent terms with
"Harriet," who confidentially tells him that the boiled beef is just up;
indeed, he has been seen now and then to put his arm round her waist and
ask her when she meant to marry him, which question Harriet is not very
well prepared to answer, as all the second season men have proposed to her
successively, and each stands equally well in her estimation, which is
kept up at the rate of a penny _per diem_. But Harriet is not the only
waiting domestic with whom he is upon friendly terms. The Toms, Charleses,
and Henrys of the supper-taverns enjoy equal familiarity; and when Nancy,
at Knight's, brings him oysters for two and asks him for the money to get
the stout, he throws down the shilling with an expression of endearment
that plainly intimates he does not mean to take back the fourpence change
out of the pot. Should he, however, in the course of his wanderings, go
into a strange eating-house, where he is not known, and consequently is
not paid becoming attention, his revenge is called into play, and he
gratifies it by the simple act of pouring the vinegar into the
pepper-castor, and emptying the contents of the salt-cellar into the
water-bottle before he gets up to walk away.
* * * * *