St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student. Edward Berdoe
and his lack of any power of retort or ability to make reprisals, to continue his address. “Come back, papa,” they would cry; “we are good now!” He knew the ringleaders, but he was too amiable and patient to expose them. “Ah, gentlemen,” he said one day in the lull of a storm of interruption, “the day will come when you will be standing helpless by the bedside of some loved one whom you would give your own lives perhaps to save, and will be powerless by reason of opportunities you are wasting now! I do not envy your reflections then. I pardon you now; your punishment will come later!” Poor fellow! he died in harness, a victim to his long years of hard work in toxicology. In a fit of depression he swallowed prussic acid, just after leaving the profession an exhaustive treatise on its uses!
Such were the lectures at St. Bernard’s, and so passed the time which should have been spent in acquiring information for which the prescribed four years’ course was all too short to gather. No wonder that so many men hold hospital lectures to be almost useless, and attend them no more frequently than they are obliged, when they are generally only occasions of childish amusement. It was not the idle and dissipated who neglected these opportunities – too often these mustered in force for the sake of the fun. It was the best men, who felt that their own rooms and their books could better assist their progress.
Jerry Horne was an accomplished photographer, and used to do many strange and interesting things with his camera. He would get a collection of skeletons from the museum, and arrange them in novel and curious attitudes. One scene was a ball-room, all the dancers being skeletons; another was an inquest, with coroner, witnesses, and jurymen, all skeletons; another an operating theatre, with a skeleton surgeon and assistants, a skeleton patient and spectators. But the favourite subject with the students was the skeleton lecturer, with a skeleton audience larking and otherwise neglecting the business for which they had assembled. The boys bought all these drolleries, and horrified and even appalled their mammas and sisters when they went home, by exhibiting them in a gay and easy manner, thus manifesting their indifference to and contempt of death and the ultimate destiny of man.
Elsworth often thought of the lines Louis XIV. was fond of quoting from Racine: —
“Mon Dieu, quelle guerre cruelle!
Je trouve deux hommes en moi.”
One of these two men within him was doomed to perish, which should it be? The wild follies of his companions had a strange fascination for him, and daily he seemed getting spiritually harder and more engrossed with unworthy pursuits. He was full of fun, and there seemed such drollery to be got out of upsetting policemen, leaping closed toll-gates without paying, and such-like pranks, that the lofty purposes with which he entered seemed like the blossoms in spring, which yield to the first frosty night after their appearance. Of course he could have held on his way had he been firmer, but the majority of the better-hearted men were so given to these sprees that he seemed to be merely finding his natural level in joining with them.
Dr. Day often invited Elsworth to spend an evening with him at his lodgings. The great anatomist was not a man of one book, but of world-wide reading and information. Nothing was too small for him to notice, no subject too deep for him to study: he lived to know. There was a charm about the old man, and the calm philosophic way he bore his reverses commanded the respect of all who knew his story. There was one subject on which he was impervious to argument: he would never admit that it concerned him in the least how the subjects for dissection had come into his hands. “If people like to use dynamite and the knife to advance their political projects, what has that to do with the leaders of the party who profit by their actions? Is it not an infamous calumny to accuse them of being the associates of murderers? My work was to teach anatomy. I did not kill people, I did not employ those who did. If the greed of money prompted men to do improper things, how could I be held responsible for them simply because I paid liberally and asked no questions?”
He cared nothing for the healing art; his speciality was the dead subject. The only true use in living, he seemed to think, was to provide the anatomist with good subjects for his table. The man had not lived in vain who had served Robert Day with his frame. He was an atheist, a dogmatic atheist, interested not merely in denying the God of the Bible, but in proving the impossibility of the existence of any Supreme Being at all. Hence the melancholy of the man. His daughter shared his views, for she worshipped her father, and he had taken care she should learn nothing of religion from her infancy. They took pains to imbue Elsworth with their opinions; not that they vulgarly scoffed at his faith, but as propagandists of “the religion of Man” they declared it their duty to wage war against that of God. The learning of the old man and his daughter tempted our student to many a discussion with them; he thought if his faith would not stand a little argument it was not worth much. An orange tree grows and bears fruit in the open air in the South, but soon sickens and dies in an English garden. It was rash of Elsworth to subject his faith to such a test. He was doing what has proved fatal to many a youthful mind.
CHAPTER VI.
JACK MURPHY’S PARTY
Wine and youth are fire upon fire.
Idleness, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes.
Firmly screwed upon the door Doth the lion-knocker frown. To-night its reign of noise is o’er; Courage, boys, we’ll have it down! Long its strength defied Every dodge we tried; But its nuts no more shall bear it, From the hinge to-night we’ll tear it.
Jack Murphy gave his party. The winter session was nearly over, and in a few days the students would be all dispersed to the bosoms of their families. For several days past their spirits had been rising, and their fun even at lecture and in the wards was scarcely restrained within moderate bounds. Work was kept up with difficulty, and many of the men were leaving daily. Eight of the choicest spirits of the school turned up on the appointed night. There was not one of them who had not borne the brunt of battle, and won his spurs on a contested field. There was big, heavy Tom Lennard. He was the hero of the smash-up at the Chelsea Alcazar, a not very reputable, but much patronized, place of entertainment, with an open-air dancing platform. There was a fête one summer night there, and an attack on the place was organized by the young medicos of the hospital. The police knew nothing of the proposed attempt, and their numbers were too few to interfere much with their destructive sport. After satisfying their vengeance for some affront they had previously suffered at the hands of the proprietors, they marched through the town in the small hours of the morning, shouting, bellowing, and singing at the top of their alcoholized voices, and upsetting everybody and everything that came in their way. At the houses on either side of their path they threw stones, half bricks, and other missiles, to the terror and alarm of the peaceful inhabitants, and the danger of any sick person who might be in them. A large brickbat, hurled by the powerful hand of Tom Lennard, fell plump on the bed of an old gentleman who lay dying, and his friends were naturally very angry with the perpetrators of such dastardly violence. The destroying army of young gentlemen roughs passed on, leaving behind them very distinct traces of the wreck they had wrought. There were loud outcries against the police, and the whole business made a great stir in the press. Somehow, Tom Lennard’s conduct was discovered by the authorities of his hospital; he was then at St. Luke’s, but was expelled with the loss of all his fees. It was felt that he had somewhat exceeded the natural hilarity of an embryo surgeon, and he was advised to migrate. He migrated to St. Bernard’s, where he had reason to hope the tone of the governing body was less severe. This exploit, and the fact that he was at least a confessor, if not a martyr, in the cause of student life, made him immensely popular with his fellows, and he was always in request when anything was “on.” Tom was a splendid specimen of the muscular student, if student it were correct to term him. He was never known to study anything, con amore, but practical jokes, billiards, football, and midnight revelry. He did fairly well at the examinations by coaches and hard cramming.