The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Complete. Oliver Wendell Holmes
between the two,
Like an octave flute and a tavern gong.
Now being from Paris but recently,
This fine young man would show his skill;
And so they gave him, his hand to try,
A hospital patient extremely ill.
Some said that his liver was short of bile,
And some that his heart was over size,
While some kept arguing, all the while,
He was crammed with tubercles up to his eyes.
This fine young man then up stepped he,
And all the doctors made a pause;
Said he, The man must die, you see,
By the fifty-seventh of Louis's laws.
But since the case is a desperate one,
To explore his chest it may be well;
For if he should die and it were not done,
You know the autopsy would not tell.
Then out his stethoscope he took,
And on it placed his curious ear;
Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look,
Why, here is a sound that 's mighty queer.
The bourdonnement is very clear—
Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive
Five doctors took their turn to hear;
Amphoric buzzing, said all the five.
There's empyema beyond a doubt;
We'll plunge a trocar in his side.
The diagnosis was made out—
They tapped the patient; so he died.
Now such as hate new-fashioned toys
Began to look extremely glum;
They said that rattles were made for boys,
And vowed that his buzzing was all a hum.
There was an old lady had long been sick,
And what was the matter none did know
Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was quick;
To her this knowing youth must go.
So there the nice old lady sat,
With phials and boxes all in a row;
She asked the young doctor what he was at,
To thump her and tumble her ruffles so.
Now, when the stethoscope came out,
The flies began to buzz and whiz
Oh ho! the matter is clear, no doubt;
An aneurism there plainly is.
The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie
And the bruit de diable are all combined;
How happy Bouillaud would be,
If he a case like this could find!
Now, when the neighboring doctors found
A case so rare had been descried,
They every day her ribs did pound
In squads of twenty; so she died.
Then six young damsels, slight and frail,
Received this kind young doctor's cares;
They all were getting slim and pale,
And short of breath on mounting stairs.
They all made rhymes with "sighs" and "skies,"
And loathed their puddings and buttered rolls,
And dieted, much to their friends' surprise,
On pickles and pencils and chalk and coals.
So fast their little hearts did bound,
The frightened insects buzzed the more;
So over all their chests he found
The rale sifflant and the rale sonore.
He shook his head. There's grave disease—
I greatly fear you all must die;
A slight post-mortem, if you please,
Surviving friends would gratify.
The six young damsels wept aloud,
Which so prevailed on six young men
That each his honest love avowed,
Whereat they all got well again.
This poor young man was all aghast;
The price of stethoscopes came down;
And so he was reduced at last
To practise in a country town.
The doctors being very sore,
A stethoscope they did devise
That had a rammer to clear the bore,
With a knob at the end to kill the flies.
Now use your ears, all you that can,
But don't forget to mind your eyes,
Or you may be cheated, like this young man,
By a couple of silly, abnormal flies.
EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM
THE STABILITY OF SCIENCE
THE feeble sea-birds, blinded in the storms,
On some tall lighthouse dash their little forms,
And the rude granite scatters for their pains
Those small deposits that were meant for brains.
Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun
Stands all unconscious of the mischief done;
Still the red beacon pours its evening rays
For the lost pilot with as full a blaze—
Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered fleet
Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet.
I tell their fate, though courtesy disclaims
To call our kind by such ungentle names;
Yet, if your rashness bid you vainly dare,
Think of their doom, ye simple, and beware.
See where aloft its hoary forehead rears
The towering pride of twice a thousand years!
Far, far below the vast incumbent pile
Sleeps the gray rock from art's AEgean isle
Its massive courses, circling as they rise,
Swell from the waves to mingle with the skies;
There every quarry lends its marble spoil,
And clustering ages blend their common toil;
The Greek, the Roman, reared its ancient walls,
The silent Arab arched its mystic halls;
In that fair niche, by countless billows laved,
Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved;
On yon broad front that breasts the changing swell,
Mark where the ponderous sledge of Hunter fell;
By that square buttress look