THE DISSECTING-ROOM.
It was the luncheon-hour, and the winter term was drawing to a close.
The dissecting-room was deserted by all save a few enthusiastic
students who had not yet wholly exhausted the mysteries of Meckel's
ganglion, the branches of the internal iliac, or the plantar arch.
For a long time a hush of profound activity had hung over the room,
and the silence had been broken only by the screams of a parrot and
the cry of the cats'-meat-man in the street below; but by degrees the
demoralising influence of approaching holidays had begun to make
itself felt; in fact, to be quite frank, the girls were gossiping.
It was the dissector of Meckel's ganglion who began it.
"If you juniors want a piece of advice," she said, laying down her
forceps,--"a thing, by the way, which you never do want, till an
examination is imminent, and even then you don't take it,--you may
have it for nothing. Form a clear mental picture of the
spheno-maxillary fossa. When you have that, the neck of anatomy is
broken. Miss Warden, suppose, just to refresh all our memories, you
run over the foramina opening into the spheno-maxillary fossa, and
the structures passing through them."
The dissector of the plantar arch groaned.
"_Don't!_" she entreated in assumed desperation. "With the
examination so near, it makes me quite ill to be asked a question. I
should not dare to go up, if Miss Clark were not going."
"I should not have thought she was much stand-by."
"Oh, but she is! If she passes, I may hope to. I was dissecting the
popliteal space the other day, and she asked me if it was Scarpa's
triangle!"
A murmur of incredulity greeted this statement.
"She has not had an inferior extremity," said a young girl, turning
away from the cupboard in which the skeleton hung. "You can only
learn your anatomy by dissecting yourself."
"It is a heavy price to pay," said she of the spheno-maxillary fossa:
"and a difficult job at the best, I should fancy."
There was a general laugh, in which the girl at the cupboard joined.
"Where it is completed by the communicating branch of the dorsalis
pedis," said Miss Warden irrelevantly. "I am no believer in _Ellis
and Ford_ myself," she went on, looking up, "but I do think one might
learn from it the general whereabouts of Scarpa's triangle."
"Come now, Miss Warden, you know we don't believe that story. Have
you decided whether to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow for your second
professional, Miss Philips?"
"Oh, Glasgow," said the investigator of the internal iliac, almost
impatiently. "I need all the time I can get. I have not begun to
read the brain and special sense. Where can one get a bullock's eye?"
"At Dickson's, I fancy."
"And where can one see a dissection of the ear? It is so
unsatisfactory getting it up from books."
"There is a model of it in the museum."
"_Model!_" The word was spoken with infinite contempt.
"Do you know what it is, Miss Philips? You are thrown away on those
Scotch examinations. Why did you not go in for the London degree?"
"Matric.," was the laconic response.
"Oh, the Matric. is nothing!"
"Besides, I could not afford the time. Six years, even if one was
lucky enough not to get ploughed."
"Talking of being ploughed," said a student who had just entered the
room, "you won't guess whom I have just met?--Miss Maclean."
"Miss Maclean?--in London?"
"In the chemical laboratory at the present moment. She is going up
for her Intermediate again, in July."
"Who is Miss Maclean?" asked the girl who had been studying the
skeleton.
There was a general exclamation.
"Not to know her, my dear," said the new-comer, "argues
yourself--quite beneath notice. Miss Maclean is one of the
Intermediate Chronics."
"Miss Maclean is an extremely clever girl," said Miss Warden.
"When I first came to this school," said Miss Philips, "I wrote to my
people that women medical students were very much like other folks,
but that one or two were really splendid women; and I instanced Miss
Maclean."
"The proof of the student is the examination."
"That is not true--except very broadly. You passed your Intermediate
at the first go-off, but none of us would think of comparing you to
Miss Maclean."
"Thank you," was the calm reply. "I always did appreciate plain
speaking. It is quite true that I never went in for very wide
reading, nor for the last sweet thing in theories; but I have a good
working knowledge of my subjects all the same--at least I had at the
time I passed."
"Miss Maclean is too good a student; that is what is the matter with
her."
The dissector of Meckel's ganglion laughed. "Miss Maclean is awfully
kind and helpful," she said; "but I shall never forget the day when I
asked her to show me the nerve to the vastus externus on her own
dissection. She drew aside a muscle with hooks, and opened up a
complicated system of telephone wires that made my hair stand on end."
"I know. For one honest nerve with a name, she shows you a dozen
that are nameless; and the number of abnormalities that she contrives
to find is simply appalling."
"In other words, she has a spirit of genuine scientific research,"
said Miss Philips. "It does not say much for the examiners that such
a woman should fail."
A student who had been studying a brain in the corner of the room,
looked up at this moment, tossing back a mass of short dark hair from
her refined and intellectual face.
"Poor examiners," she said. "Who would wish to stand in their shoes?
Miss Maclean may be a good student, and she may have a spirit of
genuine scientific research; but nobody fails for either of those
reasons. Miss Maclean sees things very quickly, and she sees them in
a sense exactly. She puts the nails in their right places, so to
speak, and gives them a rap with the hammer; she fits in a great many
more than there is any necessity for, but she does not drive them
home. Then, when the examination comes, some of the most essential
ones have dropped out, and have to be looked for all over again. It
was a fatal mistake, too, to begin her Final work before she had
passed her Intermediate. I don't know what subject Miss Maclean
failed in, but I am not in the least surprised that she failed."
Her audience heard the last sentence in a kind of nightmare; for Mona
had entered the room, and was standing listening, a few yards behind
the speaker. The girl turned round quickly, when she saw the
conscious glances.
"I did not know you were there, Miss Maclean," she said proudly,
indignant with herself for blushing.
Mona drew a stool up to the same table, and sat down.
"It is I who ought to apologise, Miss Lascelles," she said, "for
listening to remarks that were not intended for me; but I was so much
interested that I did not stop to think. One so seldom gets the
benefit of a perfectly frank diagnosis."
"I don't know that it was perfectly frank. Some one was abusing the
examiners, and I spoke in hot blood----"
"It seems to me that statements made in hot blood are the only ones
worth listening to--if we have a germ of poetry in us. Statements
made in cold blood always prove to be truisms when you come to
analyse them."
"And one thing I said was not even true--I _was_ surprised when you
failed."
Mona was not listening. "What you said was extremely sensible," she
said, "but so neatly put that one is instinctively on one's guard
against it. It is a dreary metaphor--driving in nails; and, if it be
a just one, it describes exactly my quarrel with medicine, from an
examination point of view. Why does not one big nail involve a lot
of little ones? Or rather, why may we not develop like trees, taking
what conduces to our growth, and rejecting the rest? Why are we
doomed to make pigeon-holes, and drive in nails?"
"But the knowledge a doctor requires is in a sense unlike any other.
He wants it, not for himself, but for other people."
"And so we come back to the eternal question, whether a man benefits
humanity more by self-development or self-sacrifice? Does knowledge
that is fastened on as an appendage ever do any good? Have not the
great specialists, the men of genius, who are looked upon as towers
of strength, worked mainly at the thing they enjoyed working at?"
"Yes," said Miss Lascelles, "but they passed their examinations
first."
Mona laughed. "True," she said, "I own the soft impeachment; and
there you have the one and only argument in favour of girls beginning
to study medicine when they are quite young. It is so easy for them
to get up facts and tables."
"I think one requires to get up less, in the way of facts and tables,
for the London than for any other examination. It is more honest,
more searching, than any other."
Mona smiled--a very sad little smile. "Perhaps," she said.
"I don't know what you mean by knowledge that is fastened on as an
appendage never doing any good," said the girl who held that the
proof of the student was the examination; "I don't profess to have
found any mysterious food for my intellectual growth in the action
and uses of rhubarb, but I don't find rhubarb any the less
efficacious on that account when I prescribe it."
"But you open up a pretty wide field for thought when you ask
yourself, Why rhubarb rather than anything else?"
"It is cheap," said the girl frivolously, "and it is always at hand."
No one vouchsafed any reply to this.
"You have surely done enough to those brain sections for one day,
Miss Lascelles," said Mona; "won't you come and lunch with me? It is
only a few minutes' walk to my rooms."
The girl hesitated. "Thank you," she said suddenly--"I will. I
shall be ready in five minutes."
She slipped from her high stool, and stood putting away her things--a
tiny figure scarcely bigger than a child, yet full of character and
dignity.
"In the meantime come and demonstrate this tiresome old artery, Miss
Maclean," said Miss Philips. "I am getting hopelessly muddled."
"If you knew the surroundings in which I have spent the last six
months," said Mona, smiling, "you would not expect me to know more
than the name of the internal iliac artery. I shall be very glad to
come and look at your dissection though, if I may."
"You see I have not forgotten the kindness you showed me when I first
began."
"I don't remember any kindness on my part. You were kind enough to
let me refresh my memory on your dissection, I know."
"That's one way of putting it. Do you remember my asking you how
closed tubes running through the body could do it any good?"
"Yes; and I remember how delighted I was with the intelligence of the
question. Heigh-ho! what a child you seemed to me then!"
She took the forceps in her hand, and in a moment the old enthusiasm
came back.
"How very interesting!" she said. "Look at this deep epigastric."
And a quarter of an hour had passed before she remembered her guest
and her luncheon.
"I am so sorry," she said, pulling off the sleeves she had donned for
the moment. "Is anybody going to dissect during the summer term?
Shall I be able to get a part?"
The two girls walked home together to Mona's rooms, Miss Lascelles's
diminutive figure, in its half-æsthetic, half-babyish gown and cape,
forming a curious contrast to that of her companion.
"I really do apologise most humbly for my thoughtlessness," said Mona.
"Don't," replied the other, swinging her ungloved hand and raising
her slow pleasant voice more than was necessary in the quiet street;
"one does not see too much enthusiasm in the world. It is good to
have you back."
"I feel rather like a Rip Van Winkle, as you may suppose."
"Yes. The students seem to get younger every year. It is a terrible
pity. One does not see how they are ever to take the place of some
of the present seniors. What can they know of life?"
"And, as a natural consequence, the supply of medical women will
exceed the demand in the next ten years--in this country. After
that, things will level themselves, I suppose; but at present, if a
woman is to succeed, she must be better than the average man."
"Whereas at present we are getting mainly average women, and of
course the average woman is inferior to the average man."
"Heretic!"
"Oh, but wait till women have had their chance! When they are really
educated, things will be very different."
"Do you think so? If I did not believe in women as they are now,
apart from a mythical posse, I should be miserable indeed. I have a
great respect for higher education, but there is such a thing as
Mother Nature as well."
"Even Mother Nature has only had her say for half the race."
They entered the house, and presently sat down to the luncheon-table.
"Explanations are always a mistake," said Miss Lascelles suddenly.
"Always," said Mona, "and especially when there is no occasion for
them."
"----but I should like to tell you that I thought out that nail
metaphor (God forgive the term!) in relation to myself originally.
It is because I am so familiar with that weakness in myself, that I
recognised, or fancied I recognised, it in you. I think our minds
are somewhat alike, though, of course, you have a much fresher and
brighter way of looking at things than I."
"----and I am the profounder student," she added mentally.
"Explanations are not always a mistake," said Mona. "It was very
kind of you to make that one. I should be glad to think my cost of
mind was like yours, but I am afraid it is only the superficial
resemblance which Giuseppe's violins bore to those of the master."
"It is pleasant, is it not, to leave dusty museums now and then, and
feel Science growing all around one? And what I love about London
University is, that it allows for that kind of thing in its Honours
papers. It is a case of 'This ought ye to have done, and not have
left the other undone.' But it is difficult to find time for both."
"Ay, especially when one has to find time for so many other things as
well."
"Yes. I feel that intensely. I hate to be insulated. I must touch
at more points than one. But I do try to work conscientiously, or
rather I don't try. It is my nature. Study is a pure delight to me."
"I expect you will be taking honours in all four subjects."
"I find it a great help in any case to do the honours work: it is so
much more practical and useful; but it does take a lot of time. I
find it impossible to work more than ten hours a day----"
Mona laid down the fish-slice in horror.
"Ten hours a day!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; I tried twelve, but I could not keep it up."
"I should hope not. I call eight hours spurting. I only read for
six, as a rule, and for the last fortnight before an examination,
only two."
"Why?"
"I can't read at the end. That is the ruin of me. Up to the last
fortnight, I seem to know more than most of my fellow-students; but
then I collapse, while they--they withdraw into private life. What
mystic rites and incantations go on there I can't even divine; but
they emerge all armed _cap-à-pie_, conquering and to conquer, while I
crawl out from my lethargy to fail."
"You have the consolation of knowing that you really know your work
better than they."
"Do you know, I have had nearly enough of that kind of consolation?
I could make shift now to do with an inferior, more tangible kind."
"You will get that too this time."
Mona sighed. "_How_ I hope so!" she said. "Have some more Chablis,
and let us drink to our joint success."
"I confess I was rather surprised that Miss Reynolds passed. I am
not given to meddling in other people's affairs; but if Miss Reynolds
is ever to take her degree at all, it was quite time you came back.
Have you seen her yet?"
"Only for a few minutes. She is coming to spend the evening with me."
"You know she used to hide a capacity for very earnest work behind an
aggravatingly frivolous exterior. Now it is just the other way. She
professes to be in earnest, but I am sure she is doing nothing. You
will wonder how I know, when I am not at hospital; but quite a number
of the students have spoken of it. She never read widely. The
secret of her success was that she took good notes of the lectures,
and then got them up. But now they say she is taking no notes at
all, scarcely. It was very much against her, of course, coming in in
the middle of term; but one would have predicted that that would only
have made her work the harder."
"I don't think so. That is not what I should have predicted. She
really worked too hard last summer, and a thorough reaction is a good
sign. I think that is quite sufficient to account for what you say.
Miss Reynolds is a healthy animal, and one may depend upon her
instincts to be pretty correct. She will accomplish all the more in
the end, for letting her mind lie fallow this year."
But though Mona spoke with apparent certainty, she felt rather
uneasy. Lucy's letters had been few and unsatisfactory of late; and
her manner, when she met her old friend at the station, had been more
unsatisfactory still.
"I can't force her confidence," Mona thought, when Miss Lascelles was
gone; "but I hope she will tell me what is the matter. Poor little
soul!"
It was pretty late in the evening when Lucy arrived, pale and tired.
"I have kept you waiting for dinner," she said; "I am so sorry. A
fractured skull came in just as I was leaving, and I waited to see
them trephine. They don't think it will be successful, and--it made
me rather faint. But it's an awfully neat operation."
Mona went to the table and poured out a glass of wine. "Drink that,"
she said, "and then come to my bedroom and have a good splash. I
will do all the talking during dinner; and when you are quite rested,
you shall tell me the news."
"Life will be a different thing, now you are back," Lucy said, as
they seated themselves at the table. "What lovely flowers!"
"You ought to admire them. Aunt Maud sent them from your beloved
Cannes. I do so admire that Frisia. It is white and virginal, like
Doris."
The last remark was added hastily, for at the mention of Cannes, Lucy
had blushed violently and incomprehensibly.
"I was at the School to-day," Mona went on.
"Were you really? It must have been horrid going back."
"It was very horrid to find the organic solutions in the chemical
laboratory at such a low ebb. But I suppose they will be filled up
again for the summer term."
"Oh, you know all those stupid old tests!"
"It is precisely the part of the examination that I am most afraid
of. I have not your luck--or power of divination. Why don't they
ask us to find whether a hydroxyl group is present in a solution, or
something of that kind?"
"Thank heaven, they don't!"
"I wonder what a scientific chemist would say, if he were asked to
identify two organic mixtures in an hour and a half!"
"I did it in half an hour."
"Yes, but how? By tasting, and guessing, and adding I in KI, or
perchloride of iron."
Lucy helped herself to more potato.
"I seem to have heard these sentiments before," she said.
Mona laughed. "Yes; and you are in a fair way to hear them pretty
frequently again, unless you keep out of my way for the next four
months."
"Did you go into the dissecting-room?"
"Yes; and what do you think I found them dissecting?"
"Anything new?"
"Quite, I hope, in that connection--my unworthy self," and Mona told
the story of her little adventure.
"Well, really," said Lucy indignantly, "those juniors want a good
setting down. I never heard such a piece of bare-faced impudence in
my life. What on earth do they know about you, except that you are
one of the best students in the School?"
"There, there, firebrand!" said Mona, much relieved to see the old
Lucy again, "I think you and I have been known to say as much as that
of our betters. In truth, it did me a world of good. I was very
morbid about going back to the anatomy-room--partly because I had got
out of tune with the work, partly because I knew nobody would know
what to say to me, and there would be an awkward choice between
constrained remarks and more constrained silences. It was a great
relief to find myself and my failures taken frankly for granted. How
I wish people could learn that, unless they can be superlatively
tactful, it is better not to be tactful at all; for of tact it is
more true than of anything else, that _ars est celare artem_. But,
to return to the point we started from, there is a great deal of
truth in what Miss Lascelles said. For the next four months I am
going to spend my life _driving in nails_."
Lucy shivered. "Couldn't you screw them in?" she suggested. "It
would make so much less noise."
Mona reflected for a moment. "No," she said, "there is something in
the idea of a good sharp rap with the hammer that gives relief to my
injured feelings." And she brought her closed fist on the table with
a force that sent a ruddy glow across her white knuckles.
"And now," she said, "it is your innings. I want to know so many
things. How do you like hospital?"
"Oh, it is awfully interesting;" but Lucy's manner was not
enthusiastic. "I spotted a presystolic murmur yesterday."
"H'm. Who said it was a presystolic? Did not you find it very cold
coming back to London from the sunny South?"
Lucy shivered again. "It was horrid," she said.
"And you really had a good, gay, light-hearted time?"
It was a full minute before the girl answered, "Oh yes," she said
hurriedly and emphatically. "It was delightful. I--I was not
thinking."
"That is just what you were doing. A penny for your thoughts."
Again there was a silence. Evidently Lucy was strongly tempted to
make a clean breast of it.
"I am in my father's black books," she said at last.
Mona looked at her searchingly. That the statement was true, she did
not doubt; but that this was the sole cause of Lucy's evident
depression, she did not believe for a moment.
"How have you contrived to get there?" she asked.
"It is not such a remarkable feat as you think. I went to Monte
Carlo with the Munros."
"Did he object?"
"Awfully! You see, when I came to write about it, I thought I would
wait and tell them when I got home: but Mr Wilson, one of the
churchwardens, saw me there, and the story leaked out."
"But you did not play?"
"No--not to call playing. Evelyn was so slow--I pushed her money
into place with the cue. But my father does not think so much of
that. It is my being there at all that he objects to."
"Just for once?"
"Just for once. He said you would not have gone."
"That is a profound mistake. I want very much to see a
gambling-saloon, and I certainly should have gone. I will tell him
so the first time I see him."
"Oh, Mona, don't! What is the use? Two blacks don't make a white."
"Truly; but, on the other hand, you can't make a black white by
painting it. Your father thinks me so much better than I am, that he
binds me over to be honest with him. Besides, I want to defend my
point. Of course, I should not go if I thought it wrong. But, Lucy,
that is not a thing to worry about. It can't be undone now, even if
you wished it; and your father would be the last man in the world to
want you to distress yourself fruitlessly. Of all the men I know, he
is the most godlike, in his readiness to say, 'Come now, and let us
reason together.'"
"I am not distressing myself," Lucy said, brightening up with an
evident effort. "Did I ever tell you, Mona, about the boy we met at
Monte Carlo? He had got into a fix and was nearly frantic. We
begged Lady Munro to speak to him, and she invited him to Cannes, and
ultimately she and Sir Douglas sent him home. But it was such fun!
He proved to be a medical student, a St Kunigonde's man. I was alone
in the sitting-room when he called,--such a pretty sunny room it was,
with a sort of general creamy-yellow tone that made my peacock dress
simply lovely! Of course we fell to comparing notes. He goes in for
his second examination at the Colleges in July, and you should have
seen his face when I told him I had passed my Intermediate M.B.
Lond.! I really believe it had never occurred to him that any woman
under thirty, and devoid of spectacles, could go in for her
Intermediate. He is coming to see me at the Hall."
A poorer counterfeit of Lucy's racy way of telling a story could
scarcely have been imagined. Mona wondered much, but she knew now
that nothing more was to be got out of her friend that night.